Panel hears VA, critics on suicides

[unhappycamper]

Panel hears VA, critics on suicides
By Karen Jowers - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Dec 14, 2007 11:47:56 EST

The father of a veteran who committed suicide teed off on the Department of Veterans Affairs at a congressional hearing Thursday, calling the VA’s mental health system “broken.”

“The VA mental health system is broken in function, and understaffed in operation,” Mike Bowman told the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee. “There are many cases of soldiers coming to the VA for help and being turned away or misdiagnosed for and then losing their battle with their demons.”

His son, Spc. Timothy Noble Bowman, killed himself on Thanksgiving Day, 2005, eight months after returning from Iraq with his Illinois National Guard unit. He was 23.

“If the veteran suicide rate is not classified as an epidemic that needs immediate and drastic attention, then the American fighting soldier needs someone in Washington who thinks it is,” said Bowman.

According to the VA’s preliminary evaluation of suicide rates among veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, there were 144 known suicides from the beginning of the war through the end of 2005, said Dr. Ira Katz, VA deputy chief of patient care services for mental health.


Read the rest of article at: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/12/military_mentalhealth_071214w/