35 to 40 Percent of Crisis Calls Rolled Over?

Veterans Affairs suicide hotline leaves many calls unanswered, legislators told

Tales of idle staff and cries for help buried in voicemail spur the House to pass a corrective bill.
Associated Press
Matthew Daily
September 26, 2016

WASHINGTON — More than one-third of calls to a suicide hotline for troubled veterans are not being answered by front-line staffers because of poor work habits and other problems at the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to the hotline’s former director.

Some hotline workers handle fewer than five calls per day and leave before their shifts end, even as crisis calls have increased sharply in recent years, said Greg Hughes, the former director of the VA’s Veterans Crisis Line. Hughes said in an internal email that some crisis line staffers “spend very little time on the phone or engaged in assigned productive activity.” Coverage at the crisis line suffers “because we have staff who routinely request to leave early,” he said.

An average of 35 to 40 percent of crisis calls received in May rolled over to back-up centers where workers have less training to deal with veterans’ problems, said Hughes, who left his post in June, weeks after sending the emails.

The House on Monday unanimously approved a bill requiring the VA to ensure that all telephone calls, text messages and other communications received by the crisis line are answered in a timely manner by an appropriately qualified person. The bill now goes to the Senate.

Rep. David Young, R-Iowa, the bill’s sponsor, said a veteran in his district told him he repeatedly received a busy signal when he called the crisis line this spring. The man later got help from a friend, but “this hotline let him down,” Young said. “A veteran in need cannot wait for help, and any incident where a veteran has trouble with the Veterans Crisis Line is simply unacceptable.”
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Hmmm, ok how about back in 2015 there was a report about this too.but they outsourced care.
In 2013 there was a veteran told to call back on Monday and he wondered if that meant he can kill himself then.

And then in 2011 they took in a record number of calls.
But within all this are a couple of overlooked factors. First, Congress has been holding hearings on all this all along going back to 2007 with the bill they wrote starting all this prevention, oh, and then writing more of them, spending more money on repeats when they couldn't that the first one right. The other factor is just as simple. We're still talking about "raising awareness" as if nothing has been done before, when in fact, it has all been done to death. Their deaths.

Troy Vietnam Memorial Destroyed by Unlicensed Driver

Police: Unlicensed driver destroyed Vietnam memorial in Troy
Oneida Daily Dispatch
By Nicholas Buonanno
September 27, 2016 

TROY 
A Troy woman was ticketed after crashing Sunday morning into a memorial just dedicated just last year to a city native who died in the Vietnam war.

Troy firefighters look over a memorial dedicated in 2015 to a Troy man killed during the Vietnam war that was destroyed Sunday morning when it was struck by a vehicle. SIDEWINDER PHOTOGRAPHY

The incident occurred on Sunday morning near the bridge at Spring Avenue and Hill Street in Troy.

City police spokesman Capt. Daniel DeWolf said Neressa Harden, 36, failed to stop at the intersection of Spring Avenue and Ida and Hill streets, proceeding through the intersection and crashing into a memorial to Robert Felter, a U.S. Marine who was killed in action Dec. 11, 1965.
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FUBAR Researchers Want to Link PTSD and TBI Together Still?

Well there was some common sense on TBI and PTSD back in 2008 and it came out of Canada.

"There's potential to say the brain damage caused by a concussion alters brain chemistry and increases your risk of developing PTSD, but just seeing a blast like that is enough to make someone depressed, and those feelings can cause further anxiety disorders." Dr. Greg Passey, a Vancouver-based PTSD expert and military veteran, said brain trauma coupled with exposure to battle events could easily lead to PTSD.

And in 2013 there was $760 million spent to research it.

As part of its collaborative effort, the Army is participating in a $60 million research study for TBI, sponsored by the National Football League, General Electric and athletic apparel manufacturer Under Armour, he said. Also, $700 million has been allocated toward both PTSD and TBI as the result of a White House executive order for a renewed effort in collaboration with the Veterans Affairs Department and other organizations.

So why all this BS as if any of this is new?

War Studies Suggest A Concussion Leaves The Brain Vulnerable To PTSD

Studies of troops who deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan have found that service members who have suffered a concussion or mild traumatic brain injury are far more likely to develop PTSD, a condition that can cause flashbacks, nightmares and severe anxiety for years after a traumatic event.

This part really gets me. Do they really think that the troops and veterans are like animals?

And research on both people and animals suggests the reason is that a brain injury can disrupt circuits that normally dampen the response to a frightening event. The result is like "driving a car and the brake's not fully functioning," says Mingxiong Huang, a biomedical physicist at the University of California, San Diego.

Patriot Guard Riders Brought Vietnam Veteran from Hospice to Harley

Patriot Guard Riders escort disabled Vietnam War vet for his birthday
FOX 2 St. Louis
BY STAFF WRITER
SEPTEMBER 26, 2016

TROY, MO (KTVI) - A veteran got quite the escort service to his birthday party. The Patriot Guard Riders escorted hospice patient and Vietnam War veteran Benny Thompson to a flag ceremony in his honor. It's part of the "Gift of a Day" program sponsored by Crossroads Hospice.
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Suicide Awareness: Something Worth Living For

Something Worth Living For
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
September 25, 2016

Did you have something to risk your life for? Obviously you did or you wouldn't have joined the military. Were you willing to die to save someone else? Easy to guess that was a fact and you proved that one everyday you were deployed. So after all that, with the life of others mattering that much, why are thinking about taking your own life? Isn't there something worth living for?

That is the part no one has been able to explain to me. The thing is you can come up with all reasonable answers but none of them really equal to anything being any harder than combat. You survived all that. While coming back home shouldn't be this hard for you or any veteran, none of it is as hopeless as you think it is.

When I told the truth about what was going on in the Veterans' Community, folks wanted what was easy to understand. Like some saying they are raising awareness and getting away with taking a couple of headlines, quoting numbers as if they even begin to understand the report they came from.  

Anyway, after thirty four years I figured since those folks are winning attention for themselves while veterans have been losing their lives for decades, it was time to do some fabricating of my own. Most of the characters came from listening to veterans over all these years and blended with imaginary situations. They got into trouble for something worth the risk.

Everyone is talking about veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq. No one is talking about the fact that the majority of veterans committing suicide are over the age of fifty. Yet our older veterans have more wisdom about what needs to be done than the younger generation has begun to understand.

So I created a story to tell what it is like for the newer veterans wrapped in a mystery, blended with a fictitious conspiracy using homeless veterans as lab rats in order to create the perfect soldier. 

These veterans were among the eleven thousand kicked out of the Army in 2013. This came after years of prevention training, the military telling us they were taking all this seriously at the same time they betrayed the very men and women willing to die for the sake of someone else. They got away with it because the American public wasn't paying enough attention.

A group of proven heroic soldiers are transferred to a old fort taken over by a high ranking member of the Army to protect them from being kicked out as well. Each of them had multiple deployments and even though they were suffering for their service they did not leave their military family.

The story is about passing judgment, raw emotions, survivor guilt, nightmares, flashbacks and losing hope that anything will ever get better. It is also about being betrayed by some while being supported by the family they entered into when they became the smallest minority in the nation. 

Those willing to die to save the lives of others yet having to search for a reason worth living for are all over the news but what is being talked about is far from the real world they live in.

You are not like the other 90+% of the population who never put their lives on the line. They suffer PTSD too and they commit suicide, but you risked your own life because other lives mattered more. Seems there should be a "veterans lives matter" movement because obviously most of you missed that. Still you don't fit in with them now that you live everyday as a veteran. You do fit in perfectly with other veterans and they are ready to help you heal so you can pass the healing along to others. That's something worth living for!

Ask yourself a question they don't want you to think about. "How does raising awareness save a single life?" What good does it do anyone to talk about a fabricated number of veterans killing themselves when they still don't know how to heal?

It is time to change the conversation from suicides to surviving. Evidence has shown no sign of suicides being reduced, no matter how much money they spend or how many times sad outcomes get into the news. You don't need someone to tell you that you don't want to live anymore. You need someone to give you back hope so you know there is something worth living for.  

RESIDUAL WAR will be on Amazon soon so get ready to see a world they only heard about from slogans.