VA Mental Health Summit sees increased attendance

The Veteran Affairs Medical Center hosted its fifth annual mental health summit Wednesday, which focused on resources for veterans and caregivers.

Dr. Sandra Jackson, event coordinator, said about 115 people were in attendance for the summit, which covered topics such as military culture, post-traumatic stress disorder and services available for family members before lunch. The second part of the day focused on suicide in veterans.

“The purpose is really to bring together stakeholders to really open the dialog about mental health services that are available and military culture and really develop partnerships,” she said. “One of the things the panel members talked about is that they don’t know about the services that they’re eligible for, family members don’t know how to get support, providers in the community might have veterans that present to them and they’re not as knowledgeable about the uniqueness that military service members bring.”

These sessions included working with the governor on suicide prevention, suicide risk evaluation, tools and resources, providing support to individuals and families following a suicide/suicide attempt and suicide risk mitigation.

According to data from the VA, there was more than 6,000 veteran suicides each year from 2008 to 2016. Plus, in 2016 the suicide rate for veterans was 1.5 times higher than for non-veteran adults.

Suicide and PTSD rates were part of what prompted the VA to start offering annual mental health summits at the different facilities around the nation. However, there isn’t a set program for the summit, which allows the different medical centers to tailor the content toward the needs in their community.

Jackson said last year’s summit spent time addressing issues such as opioid and substance abuse in veterans. During the feedback portion of last year’s event, she said, those topics went over well, but she saw people asking for information about PTSD, which is why that topic had more time dedicated to it this year.

“What we’ve done here is we’ve married together mental health in the morning and then in the afternoon there’s a whole section on suicide prevention. “We want to get to zero suicide,” Jackson said. “That is our goal.”

Jackson said she was happy with this year’s turn out since it’s higher than in past years and she wants it to continue to grow. The summit is in a partnership with Three Rivers College and is held at the Tinnin Fine Arts Center. It was originally held at the VA for the first three years, but this is the second year it’s been held at TRC, which is lending more space for the summit to continue to grow.

“At the end of this session, I asked people to raise their hand if this was their first time,” Jackson said. “I expected to get one or two but it was probably 30 hands that came up. So that’s a good thing. We’re really happy that there’s first time folks here at the summit because we want to get the word out.”