The number of suicide attempts each month among veterans in the care of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) may exceed 1,000, said the man who runs the department.
James Peake, VA secretary, told the House Veterans Affairs Committee on May 6 that the figure used in an internal VA e-mail and released during a trial in San Francisco is probably accurate.
Rep. Bob Filner, committee chairman, accused the VA of a "cover-up" for not divulging the data sooner.
"If you have a document showing 1,000 suicide attempts per month, we have some real difficult issues. But you never passed us that information and you never asked us to help you, saying you had it under control," he said. ""You don't have it under control."
Peake said the number is less dramatic than it appears.
"I can appreciate that the number of 1,000 suicide attempts a month might be shocking," he said, "but in a system as large as ours ... and consistent with the literature, we might well expect a larger number of attempts than that."
The number cited includes all veterans.
Peake said of the nearly 500,000 veterans who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan and then left the activeduty military from 2002 to 2005, 144 took their own lives.
He said the figure slightly exceeds the rate expected in the comparable general population.
But earlier last month, the head of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) said the number of suicides by recent veterans could top the number of deaths by combat.
Thomas Insel, NIMH director, told a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in Washington, D.C., that he based his statement on a study by the Rand Corporation and the suicide rates for patients who have substance problems and other complications of post-traumatic stress disorder.
"It's quite possible that the suicides and psychiatric mortality of this war could trump the combat deaths," he said.
© 2008 National Guard Association of the United States Provided by ProQuest LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Source: National Guard
