SAN ANTONIO – The suicide rate among military veterans is about one and a half times greater than that of the general population, according to the South Texas VA's new Suicide Prevention Team director.
Dr. James Lee Hoover was recently named the new director as part of the VA's effort to make suicide prevention a priority.
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Hoover worked for 24 years with the Federal Bureau of Prisons as the chief of psychology, responsible for overseeing mental health services to federal inmates, many of whom were mentally ill or actively suicidal.
He said those decades of work taught him a lot about the mental health crisis in our country.
Hoover has several specific plans to make the VA's mental health care system more cohesive and effective.
The plans are welcome news to Army veteran Anna King, who says the VA's mental health program changed and even saved her life.
King served in the Army from 2001 to 2009, deploying to Iraq for almost a year before being injured.
"I was hit by a mortar and then kind of thrown about 12 to 15 yards. I dislocated my jaw and broke my wrist at the same time, suffered a moderate traumatic brain injury," she said. "I was in the hospital for almost two years."
Her injuries were not only physical.
"I didn't understand the mental toll it took on me for quite a while," King said. "They were going to medically release me and retire me, and I remember throwing a big fit about it and I didn't know what I was going to do with myself for a really long time."
She was in chronic pain and said she was angry all the time.
"I threw a fit in the PTSD 101 class and I think a lot of services then came quickly to me," she said.
King is grateful that VA staff members recognized her need and led her to the right services.
Hoover said that cohesive communication is one of his main goals.
Need to talk to someone? Suicide prevention lifeline information and resources
"Suicide prevention is everyone's business," Hoover said. "So it's not just the mental health providers. It's the primary care physicians, it's the nurses, social workers, even the dentists."
Hoover will soon provide all medical staff extensive training on how to spot suicide risk and red flags.
He said spotting those issues is especially important when men and women leave the service.
"The highest period of suicide risk among veterans is in the first three years of leaving the military, and I think that speaks to the difficulty of transitioning back to civilian life," Hoover said.
King agreed with Hoover's statement.
"You have a purpose I mean even on your crappiest day you know it's something bigger than yourself is what you're doing and without my care, I had no idea what I was going to do with myself and it took a lot of other people helping me out," she said.
That help led her to a new sense of service.
"The VA even sent me back to school, so I'm a mental health provider myself now. I do more at the forefront. I work with active duty service members to help lessen that stigma, that it's okay to ask for help," King explained.
Hoover also wants to focus on same-day care. If a veteran goes to the VA for a primary care doctor's appointment, and they end up needing to talk to someone about mental health, there are always psychiatrists and psychologists on staff ready to help on the same day.
As medical providers, both King and Hoover are most concerned about the vets who never access the VA.
"The grim reality is the majority of the veterans who commit suicide are not engaged in VA care, so we need to go where they are," Hoover said. "We need to help other organizations and other community stakeholders."
"If it's a mobile unit that's amazing and that absolutely is a necessity," King said. "There's a lot of people for whatever reason don't have transportation to the VA and that's a huge issue for such a large city."
She said it's not where vets or active duty members get the care that matters, it's that they accept it.
"Sometimes there are strangers that you have to reach out to and you put a lot of faith in people you don't know and that can be absolutely terrifying. But it's okay to let them help," King said. "That help may just not look the way you expect it to and that's okay. It worked for me."
Hoover wants veterans to know that mental healthcare is also available over the phone or computer.
If you know of someone is crisis, call the Veterans Crisis Line at 1 (800) 273-8255 and press 1, or you can Text to 838255.
The South Texas VA contact numbers are 210-617-5300 and 830-792-2451. It also has a list of resources on its mental health web page.