Veterans dying of Despair

Increasing suicide rates among U.S. veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is pointing the gun towards the Department of Veterans Affairs for failing to diagnose or treat them effectively. A lawsuit has been filed against the department, alleging it has been unable to deal with the growing incidence of depression and suicides.

This has come after years of criticism for the department which has ostensibly been neglecting tens of thousands of wounded service men and women who have returned from war zones.

A class action suit was brought by veterans groups on Monday. It opened in San Francisco charging a ‘systemwide breakdown,’ citing long delays in receiving disability benefits and flaws in the way discharged soldiers at risk for suicide had been treated.

Government lawyers however disagree saying that the department has been devoting more resources to mental health.

Two non-profit groups representing the veterans wrote in court papers that "the failure to provide care is manifesting itself in an epidemic of suicides".

"The bottom line is that we're not taking care of the veterans and we need to change that," says lead lawyer, Gordon Erspamer.

An average of 18 suicides has been noted per day among the 25 million veterans in America. More than 20 percent of those were committed by men and women who were receiving treatment from Veterans Affairs.

Veterans are not being questioned enough to determine if they are suicidal, and aren't sharing information about suicide risks with the VA's network of hospitals and clinics, Ronald Maris, a University of South Carolina sociology professor, told U.S. District Judge Samuel Conti in San Francisco.

A majority of the VA's counselors, doctors, social workers and psychologists "don't have the tools and the information that they need to intervene effectively with suicidal vets," said Maris, a former president of the American Association of Suicidology who has been a consultant to the Army on suicide prevention.

He particularly condemned VA's top health care administrator, William Feeley, who said earlier this month that the agency has no systematic national plan for suicide prevention. "I would say he was singularly uninformed about suicide," Maris said.