VA smacked again for soldiers’ sufferings

The Department of Veterans Affairs was blasted by the chairman of the House Veterans Committee for failing to satisfactorily cope with the task of providing care to soldiers who emerged from the wars Afghanistan and Iraq with an extra burden of mental disturbances and psychic anguish.

“Shh!” said Dr. Ira Katz, head of mental health services for V.A., in an e-mail to a colleague. “Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among the veterans we see in our medical facilities. Is this something we should (carefully) address ourselves in some sort of release before someone stumbles on it?”

That e-mail was sent in February but only last year he gave quite-a different figure to the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee. According to Dr. Katz, there was no suicide epidemic and 790 suicide attempts were made in all of 2007.

However, the Veterans affairs secretary, James Peake, apologized for Dr. Katz’s “unfortunate set of words” and promised more sincerity and transparency.

Only last month, a study by the Rand Corporation revealed that nearly one in five service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, had symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or suffered major depression.

"This is a matter of life and death," said Chairman of the House Veterans Committee, Bob Filner, D-California, "and I think there was criminal negligence in the way this was handled."

Filner insisted the VA has either been overlooking the critical suicide data or has covered up the numbers.

"I can appreciate that the number of 1,000 suicide attempts a month might be shocking," said Peake, "but in a system as large as ours ... and consistent with the literature, we might well expect a larger number of attempts than that."

He asserted that no attempts have been made to downplay the numbers on suicides among veterans.

"Our intent is to be forthcoming," he said. "If we've got something to hide, we shouldn't be hiding it. We should be doing something about it."

The problems with VA remain, inspite of firing of the top brass following a huge public outcry after the revelation of neglect and maltreatment of patients at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Katz’s resignation has been demanded by members of the House and Senate committees since he has been accused of being bothered about covering his agency's standing, rather than with the welfare of its clients.