Veterans Affairs To Increase Mental Health Staffing
In my last blog post, I outlined the horrible situation facing many of our U.S. combat veterans returning from the extended wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. (see ‘U.S. Military Veterans Face Risks At Home’ below)
Good News
An article in today’s N.Y. Times (April 10) reports that, “The Department of Veterans Affairs announced on Thursday that it plans to hire about 1,600 additional psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and other mental health clinicians in an effort to reduce long waiting times for services at many veterans medical centers.
The hiring, which would be augmented by the addition of 300 clerical workers, would increase the department’s mental health staff by nearly 10 percent at a time when the veterans health system is being overwhelmed ….”
So it would appear that at least there is an awareness in the government that the problem exists and that it is not presently being addressed adequately. But what does this response tell you when you read between the bureaucratic lines?
Is That All Good News??
The first thing that sticks out is the size of the increase, e.g. 10 percent. Several experts that have reviewed this problem, including some within the VA have estimated that the mental health staff needed to be increased by as much as 50 percent just to handle the current case load requirements. And that case load is projected to increase exponentially in future years. The Secretary of Veterans Affairs said recently, “History shows that the costs of war continue to grow for a decade or more after the operational missions have ended.”
And, sad to say, a hiring initiative does little to address the problem near-term. Recruiting, hiring and orientation of a large number of skilled health care professionals does not occur overnight. And there are not an excess of these skilled people just sitting around waiting for the VA to call. Also, keep in mind that some of these VA facilities are located in locations you may have never heard of – maybe not a lot of pent-up desire for professionals to relocate there. Not an ideal hiring environment.
The Bad News
The VA says it is going to fund this expansion of mental health coverage, and the hiring initiative that accompanies it, out of the current department budgets. Hmm? What current programs will those funds come from? I personally know a number of veterans that are already experiencing long waits or are on ‘extended hold’ for surgery and other vital ‘non-mental health’ medical treatments.
In addition the department’s inspector general is expected to release a report next week asserting that “waiting times for mental health services are significantly longer than the department has been willing to acknowledge.”
It should be noted that efforts have been started to screen all veterans returning from combat tours for stress and mental disorders. Those measures have not been fully implemented and there are questions about the predictive reliability of testing methods being used. The department says it has a policy to do mental health evaluations of all veterans not in crises within 14 days, a goal it says it meets 95 percent of the time. The coming IG report is expected to refute the validity of that claim as well.
Where is the support of the administration on this subject? Well this is an indicator. Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a scathing ruling saying that the VA had failed to provide adequate mental health services to veterans – a ruling that supported the claims of many organizations, including veterans organizations. What was the Obama administrations response? The administration appealed the ruling.
The Results?
Larry adds: To me this appears to be ‘too little, too late.’ And the fact that this initiative was not funded is glaring. Let’s face it in a bureaucracy money talk, money may not always make things happen, but nothing happens without it.
When you want solar energy to happen, you do what? You throw millions of dollars at it. When you want a furor about veterans health care to subside, you do what? You throw a bunch of verbiage around and announce a big new program and then don’t fund it!
Underlying all of this is the disability compensation system for injured and disabled veterans. The system is struggling with a backlog of department evaluations. There are nearly a million veterans waiting for decisions on their disability claims. Do you suppose the funding for the mental health personnel hiring is going to come out of the disability evaluation department’s budget?
Till Next Time. Pura Vida (click thumbnail to enlarge)