Going to Vet. Admin. form MH help

Anyone else using the VA, Veterans Administration for Mental Health treatment? If you ever do you will quickly see why we have 20-22 vets dying from suicide a DAY.

Hard to believe there are no veterans in here.

Yes, I go.........Good Luck

Are you having good results?

I'm a vet but I have Medicare, so I don't use the VA.

Are you having any luck so far?

Well....it took 3 mos to get the first appointment, then the following appointments have been 2-3 mos apart. Is it any wonder our vets are falling to suicide? I never knew how bad it was until I got involved, lost my job and private insurance. With private insurance I was being seen once a week and feeling some better. Now so much time lapse that I forget what we have already talked about. People need to know how bad it really is and why young men and women are taking their lives because the options for treatment are not there for them. When I get to feeling better I really want to get involved with making this change.

It is the same where I live. Psych and T's at my place are leaving left and right, I think sometimes that they feel pretty much the stress that we feel by not getting the proper treatment, or not being seen as often as we should.

I hear the word "burned out" quite a bit around my mental health center. The process for rehiring takes several months. Four yrs ago when I started going there, they had 4 psych and 5 therapists, they now have two of each.

Its a vicious circle for them and for us.

It is getting so bad at my place that they referred me to a psych nurse practitioner.......? She had no idea what do with me!!! and told me so, and didn't know why I was even there to see her.

Right now I am looking into Obama care, and maybe I will even try the county. Meanwhile I am not on any meds at all and it is really rough

Well Obama care worked out for me until I lost my job, then I didn't have enough income to keep it. Plus you can't be enrolled in VA benefits and get Obama care, they say it's double dipping (?) So I had to make a choice of which to keep, when I was eligible. There's pro's and cons of each. I didn't want to give up my VA benefits because I was told I would have to reapply if I wanted them back and that may take some time. Just check out all things about it before making any choice.
I'm sure they are frustrated, the T's and Docs, because they know their treatment is not effective seeing patients like that. It would certainly wear on someone who cared and wanted to help people.
Take care of yourself and do your homework.

I'm a vet but wouldn't use the VA unless I absolutely had to.

I am friends with someone who works there and someone who used to work there, and hear/heard about many of the problems. There are some quality mental health providers there, but also lazy doctors and therapists who complain about the veteran patients and don't want anyone scheduling them into their schedules. I hear not too many veterans work there outside of janitorial jobs and am told the VA prefers recent graduates just out of college instead of veterans for therapist and social worker jobs.

Yes, there's no excuse for 3 months. Maybe a deployment just returned to the area? Don't they have a program where you could see outside providers if the wait was too long? Sorry you lost your job.

There's veteran choice program but I understand there are big problems with that and vets are getting stuck with the bill. I don't need more stress. They have hired a couple more counselors there so maybe vets can get in quicker. This is a relatively new VA Center, but they closed a local one so they should have had enough people to provide.
It's just sad our veterans are being treated this way, when each one would have given their life for this country.
I would rather have private insurance, this is a last resort
Thanks for responding back.

Yes I have been receiving mental health treatment from the VA since about 2005 and through medication and therapy, they have LITERALLY saved my LIFE.

That's awesome, so glad you are able to get the help you need. Thank you for serving *salute* Glad you are still here also.

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This is what I'm talking about Veteran, 76, kills himself in the parking lot of a VA hospital 'after being told he couldn?t see a doctor for his mental health problems | Josh | DC101