Panel on veteran suicides hears from family of one fallen soldier

      House members are concerned about the mental health of veterans in Missouri, and by how many of the state’s veterans have committed suicide.  The House Interim Committee on Veterans’ Mental Health and Suicide held Wednesday its first of four scheduled hearings, this one focused on what is already available and what is being done to offer help to veterans.

      The committee’s chairman, Representative Dave Griffith (R-Jefferson City), is a former U.S. Army 8^th Special Forces Group Green Beret.  He said part of his goal with the committee is to generate awareness of the issues veterans are facing and how they can be helped. 

      “It’s meant to shine a light on mental health issues and suicide that we’ve got in the State of Missouri and what we can do with it.  It begins with the veteran community but it also goes back to what happens in each one of our communities across the state.  It doesn’t matter whether you live in the metro or whether you live in rural Missouri.  The issues are still there and we see it all the time.”

      In discussing how serious is this issue in Missouri, the Department of Mental Health’s Veterans Services Director, Jon Sabala, told the committee that in 2019 the national veteran suicide rate was 31.6.  Missouri’s rate was 43.4. 

      “Even though Missouri does not have the highest rate of veteran suicide, which is a plus, we are still very high – definitely in the top ten in the nation.  Regardless of these rates we know that any suicide death, one or more is too many, so the goal is zero,” said Sabala.

      Missouri Veterans Commission Executive Director Paul Kirchoff agreed that the state’s rate is among the worst in the country.

      “Active duty suicides are at the highest since the great depression.  176 confirmed or pending suicide deaths for active duty in 2021, 174 in 2020, 188 veteran suicides in 2019 and that’s just in Missouri, which is significantly higher than the national average or the general population’s suicide rates.”

      In talking about what various agencies are doing to offer help, Kirchoff said the Commission launched in 2021 the Veteran’s Portal, which lists hundreds of available resources for veterans and their families.

      “As you can see, the top left [on the website] is mental health.  It’s one that we know is a priority so it is prominent on our portal.  This is at veteranbenefits.mo.gov and to date … we’ve had over 20,000 hits on that site.  It’s not enough.  We need more.  We need more veterans, we need more families to know about this and know that it is a site that they can go to reach resources that they need.”

      Devin Norton is the director of the veteran treatment program at Signature Psychiatric Hospital in Kansas City.  She told the committee that current or former military personnel seeking help often find barriers that prevent or delay treatment.

      “For example I have a veteran right now that is going through the program and he was hospitalized for suicide ideation in March … and has been working since March to ge approval from the Veterans Administration to come in for treatment, and he just got it two weeks ago,” said Norton.  “His risk factors present for completion of suicide were very high:  No support system; long history of trauma; several deployments; no current providers, so he was very high risk.”

      Norton said this individual successfully entered treatment because he was persistent, but said many veterans don’t know how to advocate for themselves and don’t trust the system with which they must deal.

      The committee closed Wednesday’s session with testimony from the family of Lieutenant Colonel Matt Brown.  Brown was a loved and well known husband and father of three.  He served in the Army National Guard which included a 14-month deployment to Afghanistan in 2009, and was about to take command of the 203^rd Engineer Battalion.  He took his own life in November of last year.

      Brown’s wife, Kelly, spoke to the committee in the hope of using her family’s experience to break the stigma associated with mental health and to play a role in preventing more such tragedies.

      “Matt had trauma very early in life that was completely unresolved.  Then you take into consideration the two career paths that Matt chose:  law enforcement and military.  We all know there’s an expectation for those guys to remain strong and to not look weak, so the effects of all of his trauma were just stuffed away,” said Kelly. 

      She said the stigma surrounding mental health issues must be addressed as a root of the problem.

      “Military leaders need mandatory education on how trauma physically changes your brain … we cannot expect someone who has experienced a trauma to be approached the same.  They don’t have the same set of coping skills that people without trauma have, so training would be high on the list, I would think, of things to be important.”

      Brown’s daughter, Bailey Blackman, told the committee that she never expected her father to take his own life.

      “Unfortunately I don’t have many answers or solutions.  I just need everyone to understand how real this is and that it can happen to anyone.”

      The committee will meet again in August.