Cutting VA Suicide Prevention Services is a Fatal Mistake

During a recent speech for the American Legion, VA Secretary Doug Collins criticized the billions spent on VA suicide prevention efforts, noting that the yearly veteran suicide number — roughly 6,500 — has barely changed. In a follow-up interview, Collins repeated his indictment of VA suicide prevention and declared that the “programs and operations have serious vulnerabilities for fraud, waste and abuse.”

Collins’s framing of these statistics flagrantly disregards how VA’s suicide prevention efforts have effectively and efficiently produced life-saving advances.

In a new op-ed for The Hill, VHPI Senior Policy Analyst Russell Lemle digs into the impressive advances beyond the topline numbers and shows how Collins’ proposed cuts on VA suicide prevention work would be devastating.