Support for Suicide Prevention Coordinators Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. TAKANO. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, according to the National Suicide Data Report for 2005-2016, approximately 20 veterans, Active Duty servicemembers, and members of the National Guard and Reserves die by suicide each day.

This rate is disproportionately higher than that of the civilian population. Of those 20 a day, 14 are not enrolled in the VA healthcare system. Part of the VA's effort to combat veteran suicide is by strengthening the role of the suicide prevention coordinator. The VA is the only healthcare system that has full-time employees dedicated to suicide prevention.

Suicide prevention coordinators identify high-risk veterans and ensure they receive appropriate care, conduct outreach, and promote awareness and best practices within the VA system. As of April 2019, the VA had approximately 444 suicide prevention coordinators stationed at medical centers across the country.

These coordinators manage care for almost 30,000 veterans who are high risk for suicide, in addition to managing their other duties as assigned.

In fiscal year 2018, these coordinators conducted more than 20,000 outreach events, reaching almost 2 million people. During the oversight trips to VA facilities, VA committee staff heard from coordinators who are overworked and struggled to keep up with their casework.

Last week, I visited the Atlanta VA Medical Center and one of three Veterans Crisis Line call centers. Last year, the Atlanta VA crisis line received 3,600 referrals. The Atlanta suicide prevention team is staffed with only eight social workers and one employee for administrative support to respond to all crisis line referrals and approximately 200 veterans identified as high risk for suicide.

Let me repeat that. They have eight social workers to manage 3,600 referrals and 200 high-risk patients a year. This team does all it can to keep up with the staggering number of referrals, but they simply do not have the capacity to conduct outreach to veterans in the community who may need help.

Suicide prevention team staffing shortages in Atlanta and at VA medical facilities across the country is why H.R. 2333, introduced by Congressman Brindisi, is so important.

It would direct the Government Accountability Office to access the workload and vacancy rates of VA suicide prevention coordinators. This report is essential to better informing Congress of the current state of suicide prevention coordinators, the resources at the facilities where they work, and the challenges they face in addressing the needs of our most vulnerable veterans.

The role of these coordinators is vital to combating veteran suicide, and this report will illustrate where the gaps in care delivery exists, especially for the clinicians, social workers, and suicide prevention coordinators working on the front lines.

I fully support this bill and I really want to thank Mr. Brindisi for championing this legislation, and I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on H.R. 2333.

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Mr. TAKANO. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

As I said in my remarks related to Mr. Brindisi's legislation, I visited the Atlanta VA Medical Center and it receives 3,600 referrals per year from the Veterans Crisis Line, which is the highest number of crisis line referrals any individual veteran medical center receives nationwide.

I know that at the medical center itself that there is a 22 percent vacancy rate among mental health professionals. They have lost eight psychiatrists across their hospital and outpatient clinics since the beginning of the year. Staff who resigned have cited salaries and workload stress as their main reasons for leaving the VA.

Mr. Brindisi's legislation goes to, however, the position of suicide prevention coordinators, and currently, the coordinators at this particular medical center are staffed up, but we are trying to figure out where these staff coordinator positions across the country may be vacant or insufficient because we know these crisis lines are being used. We have to make sure that we have the coordinators to respond to them.

But in addition to that, we need coordinators to do the outreach events to reach those veterans who are not connected with the VA. So the VA medical center in Atlanta is just one example of the staffing shortages in VA hospitals and clinics throughout the country. We know that beyond the stress and strain of our psychiatrists and of our suicide prevention coordinators, which Mr. Brindisi's bill addresses, there are nearly 50,000 vacancies at VA.

If we want to fully address the veteran suicide crisis in this country, we need to make sure that suicide prevention teams are sufficiently staffed and do more to address mental health clinician understaffing.

Mr. Brindisi's legislation is a significant step in making sure all of this happens.

Madam Speaker,

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