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Excessive Wait Times Put Veterans Needing Mental Care At Risk

22 veterans commit suicide each day according to Veterans’ Affairs
Courtesy of Melinda Russell

In 2007 Melinda Russell signed up for a 15 month tour as a military chaplain.  

“Where ever the soldiers go you go and you help them and give them comfort you let them know hey you’ve got somebody that cares about you” she says.

Like any chaplain Russell organized the worship services, wrote sermons and gave spiritual guidance. As Russell’s Battalion deployed in Iraq her role intensified; soldiers turned to her for counsel in dealing with death, loss and the daily trauma of the battlefield and she took on the role of monitoring their mental health and stability.

But it wasn’t until Russell’s personal assistant and bodyguard became suicidal that the job became too much.

“All of a sudden he has killed himself I didn’t prevent it and then I also had the images of identifying his body and cleaning up the room, he used his M16 so it was obviously messy- then there was the issue of his family- and then pictures of his children and all that loss and all that grief and all that being done by myself” she says.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ze34o033MLg&list=UUOcGqEoruZ0xKIqu7D3bKYA

Russell was medivacked out of Iraq, after taking two months off she finished her tour of duty and was eventually medically retired. So Russell came to El Paso to work with soldiers transitioning back into society.

”I was working with the Warrior Transition Battalion here at Fort Bliss there were 3 other suicide that I had to deal with so every time somebody died and they killed themselves it was just that reminder- and I just kept going back to that room- and the loss of my assistant so that is where the PTSD came in”  she says.

Despite the trauma, Russell says the therapy, regular counseling sessions and medication she got while on active duty left her in a good place. But things changed when she sought care from the VA.

“The counselor ended up quote falling in love with me and despite his feelings for me he didn’t send me to another counselor and so finally when he told me how he felt I said I need to see another counselor and he set me up with another counselor but he continued to look at my records" she says. "Then he was texting me and was very depressed and suicidal”

And then there were the wait times. Repeated cancelations left Russell waiting as long seven months between therapy sessions. Four of those months without the medication her therapist prescribed.

“Depression and PTSD go hand in hand-you have the suicidality and huge problem of PTSD patients end up killing themselves because they don’t have the right medications on board they are not seeing a psychiatrist”
she says.

After repeated complaints and attempts to get to the VA to improve the quality and frequency of her care Russell reached out to then campaigning Congressman Beto O’Rourke of Texas’ 16th district.

The VA survey he commissioned found an average of seventy one days elapsed between a veteran’s request for an appointment and seeing a mental health care provider.

El Paso VA Director John Mendoza says one of his agency’s biggest challenges has been providing access to mental health care in a medically underserved community.

”A year and a half ago we had almost sixteen or nineteen vacancies-in out mental health department and it is very difficult to provide access when you have those number of vacancies”

He says now most of those vacancies have been filled and the El Paso VA’s internal audit as of May 15th this year showed as many of 93% appointments were scheduled within 30 days.

“We are going to actually be twice a month having our wait times-posted- and so again it is going to be an opportunity for the public to be  able to track” he says.

But Russell says this figure, like many figures put out by the El Paso VA doesn’t tell the whole story. She says the El Paso VA has found a way to delay and cancel scheduled appointments it doesn’t have the capacity to meet - without it negatively affecting their official average wait time.

“What they do is very often they will put down that the client canceled- instead of the VA canceled it and the reason why they are doing that-is because if the VA canceled it, it is against the VA where as if the client  it if the veterans cancels it- then it is against the veteran” she says.

But Mendoza says he is not aware of this ever happening.

Not only were Russell’s hopes dashed and left unmet  she says her interactions with the VA intensified her PTSD -to a point that she says she can no longer pursue her career of supporting veterans and hasn’t been able to find employment in another field.

“I don’t want to be portrayed as a victim because I am not. I am a strong enough person that I can deal with a lot but having to work through the things at work in terms of the suicides and then also having to feel like I was responsible for my own counselor- life because of his suicidality put me in a position where I couldn’t handle all of it at the same time" she says.

Russell she had been asking the VA to arrange alternate mental health outside VA that was only recently received following Congressman O’Rourke’s involvement in the issue.

According to Veterans Affairs 22 Veterans commit suicide each day