[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 14916-14919]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


                   PREVENTING THE EPIDEMIC OF SUICIDE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2013, the gentlewoman from Arizona (Ms. Sinema) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.


                             General Leave

  Ms. SINEMA. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members 
have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include 
extraneous material on the subject of my Special Order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentlewoman from Arizona?
  There was no objection.
  Ms. SINEMA. Mr. Speaker, September is Suicide Prevention Month, a 
time for our Nation to raise awareness about the persistent scourge of 
suicide.
  Tens of thousands of Americans die each year purposefully by their 
own actions. They are our neighbors and our friends, our sons and our 
daughters, and too often they are the men and women who have served our 
country honorably in the United States military. An estimated 22 
veterans commit suicide every day in our country. That is one life lost 
every 65 minutes.
  One year ago, we came together in this Chamber during a special 
bipartisan order to send a clear message that this epidemic of veteran 
suicide must end. Now, 1 year later, the fight isn't over and more work 
needs to be done.
  Tonight we demonstrate our ongoing support for the individuals, 
organizations, and agencies devoted to preventing the epidemic of 
veteran suicide, and we challenge the VA, the Department of Defense, 
and our fellow lawmakers to do more. We are failing in our obligation 
to do right by those who have served so honorably.
  Finally, we send a message to military families who have experienced 
this tragedy: Your family's loss is not forgotten. We will work to stop 
this epidemic. We work for the memory of your loved ones.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend and colleague from Florida, 
Representative Yoho.
  Mr. YOHO. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a quick moment again to 
thank my colleague, Representative Sinema, for the invitation to speak 
today on the very important issue of veteran suicide prevention. She 
has been a true champion of improving access to quality care for our 
Nation's veterans and has been a leader in Congress pushing for the 
real reforms to combat veteran suicide.
  By shining a light on veteran suicide rates of approximately 22 per 
day, we as a nation can start to understand the urgency with which we 
need to solve and prevent this epidemic that our veterans, their 
families, and their friends struggle with daily. Not coping with the 
stress and anxiety early enough all too often leads to the veterans 
taking their own life.
  I want to be clear: this is not an issue that affects veterans alone; 
it affects all of us.
  Our government asked these soldiers to place themselves in harm's 
way, and if when a veteran returns home they are struggling to cope, we 
as a nation must come together to ensure a strong support system is in 
place. This means we must remove the stigma associated with seeking 
help. This means we must hire more mental health professionals and more 
who have served in combat zones themselves. This means the VA must 
provide after-hours services. The VA must review its group therapy 
model. There must be a review of discharges that resulted from mental 
health conditions, and the Department of Defense and VA must better 
coordinate the transition from DOD care to VA care.

                              {time}  1745

  I have spoken with veterans throughout my district and a common theme 
that emerges is that they have lost faith in the VA. They feel 
abandoned by the very system, the very country which they fought for to 
preserve and to protect the liberties and freedoms we have the 
privileges of experiencing daily.
  I had a young man send me a letter directly to my house, and I want 
to share some of it. He said he had been seeking care. He had served in 
the gulf war. He was in his mid-forties, and he had been seeking care 
over the course of the last 10 years. Time and time again his 
appointments had either been canceled or rescheduled, and he had gotten 
to a point where he tried to get care and over the last 13 appointments 
they were canceled or rescheduled. He ended the letter pleading for 
help, and he said that if I do not get the help and care that I need, 
because I have nowhere else to turn, that I am afraid I am either going 
to hurt somebody or myself.
  We reached out to this young man, we had him come into our office, 
and I could see a troubled individual that

[[Page 14917]]

had given up on life and had no hope for the future. We intervened for 
this young man, we called the VA system, and they got him in that 
night. Since then, I am happy to report that the man has called us and 
said it was a life-changing experience for him and he could only 
imagine what would have happened had he not gotten interdiction.
  Congress and the VA are working to solve these deficiencies so that 
our soldiers have the care they need. But it should not take an act of 
Congress, or a Congressman or -women, to intercede on behalf of a 
veteran to get the care they earned, need, and deserve. I know myself 
and my colleagues will do what is needed to fix the shortcomings of the 
DOD and the VA system.
  America and Americans cannot sit idly by and bear witness to the path 
of devastation and destruction left in the wake of a veteran suicide 
for their family and friends to deal with.
  I thank my colleague for bringing this very important subject to 
light. We all need to work in a bipartisan fashion to solve this. I 
thank my colleague.
  Ms. SINEMA. Thank you, Representative Yoho, for your leadership and, 
in particular, thank you for sharing the story of a veteran that your 
office helped.
  We hear countless stories from Members of Congress in this very body 
of veterans who reach out to our offices, sometime as a last resort as 
they are facing or contemplating suicide. I am proud to say that many 
Members of this body have done what it has taken to help those 
individuals recover and stay in touch.
  Mr. Speaker, I would now like to turn the time over to my colleague 
from Arizona, Mr. Ron Barber, for his remarks.
  Mr. BARBER. Thank you, Congresswoman, and thank you for bringing us 
together this evening on this important topic.
  I represent 85,000 veterans in my district, one of the largest 
communities of veterans in the country. My father was a veteran of 
World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. He would be appalled if he were alive 
today to see what has been happening at the Veterans Affairs Department 
in our State and in other parts of the country. I am really proud that 
this Congress has taken action to address those concerns to give the 
Secretary the authority he needs to address those concerns.
  Mr. Speaker, nearly a decade and a half of brutal conflict overseas 
has taken its toll on our men and women who serve in the Armed Forces. 
I was in Afghanistan about 3 months ago, and I saw the conditions under 
which our military operates. The stress is immense. Everywhere you go 
there is a threat. Extended deployments and multiple deployments have 
taken their toll on people we have sent to protect our country and to 
fight the battles we asked them to fight.
  It is estimated that perhaps as many as 500,000 veterans from Iraq 
and Afghanistan will return home, when all is said and done, with 
serious wounds, the wounds that are signature wounds of these 
conflicts: posttraumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury.
  Military service creates a culture that demands that our soldiers are 
tough, and the culture can also prevent many of our servicemembers from 
seeking the help they need. As a result, they are left to face the 
ghosts of war alone.
  The suicide rate among our country's brave servicemen and -women and 
veterans is at a frightening level. Some estimates have shown that as 
many as 22 veterans take their own lives every day.
  We must combat military and veteran suicide with the same conviction 
that we take on the enemy of war because it is killing our men and 
women in and out of uniform. We must wage a well-funded, well-planned 
campaign to fight this heartbreaking epidemic.
  I have been pushing for better access to health care for our veterans 
since I came to Congress almost 2\1/2\ years ago.
  One of the first bills I introduced was the Veterans Health Access 
Act to ensure that veterans could get the mental health care that they 
needed in communities without having to endure long commutes and even 
longer wait times at VA facilities.
  Government dysfunction cannot be the enemy of our servicemen and 
veterans. We must do more to cut the red tape that has kept our 
veterans from top quality mental health care. I am pleased that the VA 
bill that we passed allows the VA to contract out for services close to 
where the veteran lives. This is essential, particularly for treatment 
of mental health issues.
  Mr. Speaker, we must do more for those who have borne the brunt of 
war. We must come together--Congress, the administration, the health 
care community, mental health experts--to build upon a plan that will 
help our veterans who have served this Nation so courageously and yet 
may still be suffering.
  Again, I want to thank the gentlewoman from Arizona for bringing this 
to the House floor this evening. I stand ready to work with her and all 
of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to do what we can for our 
veterans, not only in Arizona, but nationwide.
  Ms. SINEMA. Thank you, Mr. Barber, for your commitment to supporting 
veterans in Arizona.
  Last year, I shared with you the story of a young veteran in my 
district, Sergeant Daniel Somers. Sergeant Somers was an Army veteran 
of two tours in Iraq. Diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury and PTSD, 
Sergeant Somers ultimately took his own life after struggling with the 
VA bureaucracy and not getting the help he needed in time.
  Together with the Somers family, we have worked to prevent veteran 
suicide and improve much-needed access to mental health care for our 
veterans.
  We have recently developed the Classified Veterans Access to Care Act 
to ensure that all veterans, including those with classified 
experiences, get immediate access to mental health services in the 
appropriate care setting.
  The House Veterans' Affairs Committee included this legislation in a 
larger veterans package, and we expect it to be on the floor before the 
end of the year.
  While this is an important step in supporting our veterans, we have 
much more work to do.
  I would like to take a moment to yield the floor to the gentleman 
from California, Representative LaMalfa, my friend and colleague.
  Mr. LaMALFA. Thank you. I appreciate my colleague from Arizona (Ms. 
Sinema) for your efforts on this.
  When you become a Member of the House of Representatives and you 
start receiving those calls from veterans in your district on the 
difficulty they have with what they thought they were promised by their 
government when they enlisted, when they went into the military, it 
really, really hits home. It really affects your heart to see these 
veterans who have struggled to at least be heard for their claims, for 
their health care, by the VA, by the treatment centers.
  We have to do better than that. To see the suicide rate among 
veterans the way it is, to know that they felt like the government has 
turned their backs on them, is appalling. We have to give them the 
hope.
  My office, I know my colleagues that have spoken here tonight, have 
turned towards helping as much as they can. So my message, just a brief 
message, for our veterans out there: Do not give up. Know that we are 
trying to reform the VA system, trying to reform through the measures 
that have been brought up the way the VA treats and gets the help for 
veterans who have served us.
  They made a promise to us. We need to keep the promise to them. For 
them to go feeling hopeless and that nobody cares about them, that they 
can't get treatment, is one of the biggest shames we could have as a 
country. We have asked them to do a lot. We will continue to do so in 
the future. We need to be prepared to take care of them properly, if 
they need it, when they come home.
  I appreciate, again, you having this time here tonight, Ms. Sinema, 
here in the House to put a spotlight on this as you have. What I have 
tried to do in

[[Page 14918]]

my office and the hard work by my own staff is to have our veterans be 
treated respectfully but also feel hopeful that someone hears their 
message, hears their plea, and then will address their needs timely and 
respectfully. They should not be homeless, they should not feel to the 
point of hopelessness that suicide is an alternative for them.
  Thank you, Ms. Sinema.
  Ms. SINEMA. Thank you, Representative LaMalfa, for your commitment to 
veterans. Your comment and your message to veterans of don't give up is 
one that I think we must all repeat every day, not just in words, but 
in our actions as Members of Congress to continue to reform the VA 
system and send a clear message to veterans that we won't give up 
either in reforming the system and taking care of them.
  Earlier this evening, I shared the story of Sergeant Daniel Somers. 
The VA failed Sergeant Somers. We have since learned that the VA has 
failed thousands of other veterans through gross mismanagement and 
delays in access to care.
  Veterans at the Phoenix VA and VA facilities across the country were 
placed on secret lists and had to wait months before seeing a doctor.
  The Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General's 
final report on the Phoenix VA Health Care System, which was released 
last month, confirms that the Phoenix VA, housed in my district, left 
3,500 veterans at risk of never receiving care. Additionally, 1,400 
veterans on the official electronic waiting list were left waiting for 
unacceptably long periods of care. At least 20 veterans who failed to 
receive timely or appropriate care passed away.
  Mr. Speaker, this is immoral, un-American, and it puts our veterans 
at risk. But in Arizona, we are not idly waiting for Washington to take 
action, we are taking action ourselves.
  In Phoenix, we have established a working group of community 
providers, veterans service organizations, and the local VA to work 
together to improve access to services. We also recently cohosted our 
first Veterans First Clinic, which brought together community 
providers, the Phoenix VA, and over 20 veteran-serving organizations to 
help veterans in a variety of ways. Approximately 400 veterans and 
their families attended and got the care that they earned and that they 
deserve.
  These are examples of the good that results when we set aside 
partisanship and focus instead on putting veterans first to help meet 
their needs.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to share a story from my district. Last month, a 
local veteran, Peter, came to our district office. He came to ask for 
help with his claims and for help navigating the VA.
  After meeting with my social work staff for 2 hours, Peter told one 
of my caseworkers that he had thoughts of suicide and he had the 
ability to carry out those thoughts. In fact, he said, the only thing 
keeping him from doing so was his daughters.
  Our office met with Peter for an additional 2 hours, listening to him 
share his feelings and focusing on solutions and next steps. We shared 
with him our veterans resource guide, which let him know about 
available community programs and organizations dedicated to supporting 
veterans with services that range from mental health treatment to 
financial assistance.
  Peter told us he had no idea there were so many organizations that 
support local veterans, and he left our office that day feeling better 
than when he had arrived.
  Mr. Speaker, I spoke with him personally just a few days later. He 
told me he had never heard of an office that would respond and care 
about his suicidal ideation, his depression, and his needs. I am 
grateful that Peter came to our office. I am even more grateful that we 
were able to help him.
  Since meeting with Peter and other veterans in our district, we have 
released a veterans resource guide for the Ninth Congressional District 
in Arizona, a comprehensive 27-page document that provides local 
veterans with detailed information about community resources that are 
available to them. We hope that this resource guide will be replicated 
in districts across the country.

                              {time}  1800

  Mr. Speaker, the issue of veteran suicide and the systemic problems 
in the VA system require a substantial local and national effort. My 
colleagues here today believe, as I believe, that no one who comes home 
after serving our country should ever feel like he or she has nowhere 
to turn.
  In response to the VA crisis, Congress recently passed and the 
President signed into law the Veterans Access to Care Through Choice, 
Accountability, and Transparency Act. This legislation makes needed 
reforms to the VA health care system and will ensure that Arizona 
veterans get access to the care that they have earned.
  The Veterans Access to Care Through Choice, Accountability, and 
Transparency Act builds on our work to address the crisis in Phoenix by 
allowing veterans who have been waiting for medical care for more than 
30 days to receive care from non-VA doctors.
  It authorizes the VA to fire senior managers who knew about these 
coverups across the country. It reviews scheduling systems and 
technology so that fewer veterans slip through the cracks when seeking 
care.
  It provides resources for more physicians and medical staff to work 
in VA hospitals around the country; also, it creates an independent 
commission to investigate the Veterans Administration to find out what 
went wrong and evaluate access to care throughout the VA health care 
system.
  Mr. Speaker, this legislation was an important step forward, but more 
action is required. The first step is speedy and effective 
implementation of this important bill. I urge the VA and agencies 
locally who are working with the VA to speed the implementation of this 
important legislation and show a change of culture at the VA. We all 
believe that veterans deserve the best possible care.
  Carl McLaughlin, a 38-year-old Army veteran, committed suicide on 
December 19, 2013. He had been stationed in Bosnia, and he was released 
from the Army on a medical discharge in 2004.
  Starting in 2006, Carl was treated at the Phoenix VA, but, as time 
went on, it became increasingly difficult for Carl to see his doctor. 
According to Carl's mother, Terry, at the time of his death, Carl was 
waiting to hear back from the Phoenix VA to have his medications 
adjusted and to see his doctor.
  Carl suffered from recurring pain caused by shoulder injury, severe 
hearing loss, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder. His 
depression worsened over time.
  Terry, Carl's mom, told us:

       The last time I saw Carl was a few days before his death. 
     He looked really depressed, and I asked him if he had a 
     doctor's appointment scheduled because I know he had been 
     waiting over 4 weeks for a call back from the doctor's 
     office. He said, no, he was still waiting.
       He called them the next day, six times, and left three 
     messages. He was put on hold and hung up on the other three 
     times. This problem of calling and being hung up on and not 
     getting calls back had been going on for over 1 to 2 years.

  Terry asked us to share her son's story in the hope that his tragedy 
doesn't happen to another family.
  Recently, I cosponsored legislation called the Clay Hunt Suicide 
Prevention for American Veterans Act. This bill reviews mental health 
staffing requirements and increases the ability of the VA to recruit 
and train psychiatrists. Congress should pass this legislation this 
year to make it easy for veterans like Carl to see a behavioral health 
specialist.
  Mr. Speaker and Members, I want to thank my colleagues who joined me 
this evening. Our thoughts are with the families who have lost a loved 
one. Each of us can do something to raise awareness, to be that light 
for a struggling veteran in our community.
  Businesses can display signs to let veterans know that help is always 
available to them. Mental health professionals can volunteer with 
organizations like Give an Hour to provide free counseling to veterans, 
their family members, and active duty members and their families.
  We can all learn to recognize the signs of crisis by visiting

[[Page 14919]]

veteranscrisisline.net and then reaching out to the veterans in our 
lives.
  Here in Congress, we can do more. We need a VA that provides real and 
meaningful help to veterans in need and that puts veterans first and 
works aggressively with community providers to improve the quality and 
accessibility of care. We need a VA that is transparent and open to 
restore the trust and credibility it has lost.
  We who enjoy our freedom every day, thanks to the sacrifices of our 
military servicemembers, must all step up to end the epidemic of 
veteran suicide.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________