VA-provided suicide awareness and prevention programs save lives of struggling county vets
Navy veteran Lee Dyer, a VA Butler Healthcare volunteer, said he learned in a training course to ask veterans if they are thinking about suicide, and not “are you hurting.”
“They already are hurting,” Dyer said. “They want to stop the hurt.”
Dyer, of Evans City, took a trip to Greenville, N.C., last month to talk to two young veterans who are struggling after unexpectedly losing their friend, an Army Ranger, to suicide.
“You’d have thought he was the toughest guy in the world,” Dyer said of the deceased Ranger.
Eagle community editor Paula Grubbs recently spent some time with staff and volunteers at VA Butler Healthcare. She came away with a story about suicide awareness and prevention programs for U.S. military veterans.
Military service members are trained to harden themselves in preparation for any number of terrible scenarios. But no human can be made to steel his or her self against every trauma.
We don’t like to think of servicemen and servicewomen as being mentally unprepared for what they endure in war, but that is dehumanizing. To make matters worse, many service members and veterans bottle up their emotions and traumas so as to not appear weak.
This is where Dyer and VA Butler Healthcare come in, providing a space for suffering veterans to save themselves from the stigma of their own humanity.
Part of the training of all staff and volunteers is the suicide prevention programs and tactics at the VA, which spurred Dyer to plan the trip to Greenville.
Jeff Patterson, suicide prevention coordinator at VA Butler Healthcare, said among the programs at the VA is the S.A.V.E. program, which is used to train staff and volunteers, and even the community, on suicide prevention.
S.A.V.E. stands for signs of suicide, asking, validating, and expediting and encouraging treatment.
“The idea is to train them to identify suicide risk,” Patterson said.
He said the basic warning signs are hopelessness and mood changes, like rage, anxiety and sleep issues.
Patterson said if a veteran says they have a suicide plan, are contemplating suicide or about to act on a plan, they need immediate treatment and 911 should be called.
The VA offers many programs for veterans in crisis, and we should all urge our veteran friends and loved ones to get whatever help they need and are entitled to.
— RJ
