VA San Diego Healthcare System

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In July, the Department of Veterans Affairs released its newest Veteran suicide report detailing new statistics on the Veteran suicide crisis currently affecting our nation’s heroes. The new figures show that on average, 20 Veterans a day nationwide chose to end their lives, or 18 percent of all suicides among U.S. adults. While there’s no magic solution to this issue, VA San Diego Healthcare System (VASDHS) is committed to finding incremental solutions that will further lower the numbers. Here are the five things we’re currently doing:

1.  At the time of enrollment, all Veterans are screened for suicide risk and care is given to see that they get appropriate resources to manage issues that may lead to suicide. Also, Veterans with urgent mental health needs have access to same-day care through our mental health walk-in clinic available Monday through Friday and our Emergency Department open 24/7.

2.  San Diego VA has a robust suicide prevention program that works to identify and treat high-risk patients before they take action. Currently, we have about 170 Veterans identified as high risk for suicide and this identification assigns a flag to the Veteran’s electronic medical record, and puts into place an enhanced oversight and treatment planning. Collaboration occurs among providers, and if needed, they put overdose precautions, or medication limits into place as a way to reduce access to lethal means.

3.  We only provide care for a third of the over 200,000 Veterans in San Diego County, so many Veterans don’t know the options available to them. As a solution, the suicide prevention coordinators provide outreach resources to our compensation and pension physicians, TriWest representatives and Choice Program providers to spread the word to Veterans seeking care outside the primary VA system.  We also actively participating in community groups such as the San Diego Military Family Collaborative North County Health & Wellness Team and Community Health Improvement Partnership.

4.  The suicide prevention and management work group (SPAM) reviews each attempt and death that occurs within VASDHS. These events prompt suicide prevention coordinators to provide education to specific providers or medical teams and to monitor certain clinics more closely, with the goal of decreasing the potential for missed opportunities for intervention. Annually, SPAM completes an aggregate review of the VASDHS suicide attempts and deaths to determine if there are any trends being seen locally. With the information collected, they create action plans focused on the most at risk groups of Veterans, with the goal of reducing future events from occurring again within that population of Veterans.

5.  VA suicide prevention programs nationwide will soon benefit from a new algorithm designed to flag and identify high-risk patients. The program, called REACH VET, will view several factors that are difficult for one clinician to pull together and will focus on under-the-radar patients who might not seek mental health assistance. With this new forecasting tool, clinicians nationwide will be able to treat Veterans and prevent suicide more successfully than ever.

For a complete list of resources on Veteran suicide prevention, please visit http://www.mentalhealth.va.gov/suicide_prevention/