Preventing Suicide Among Servicemembers And Veterans

March 18, 2011 -- The calls come pouring in to the National Veterans Crisis Hotline in Canandaigua, N.Y. There have been some 400,000 since the center first opened in July, 2007 and many of those calls result in rescues, including one just this past weekend.

"A servicemember called the hotline and said he intended to hang himself. He did agree to let our counselor call his wife, she was able to figure out where he was…the local emergency responders caught him just as he kicked out the chair," said Dr. Janet Kemp, national director of the Suicide Prevention Hotline at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

There is no doubt that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have taken a staggering toll on America's military men and women. A stunning report issued last year showed that in 2009 more soldiers died from non-combat injuries – like suicide – than in war. The harsh reality is that too many soldiers are dying at their own hands, and the question is how best to prevent it.

Dr. Kemp and 1,100 other attendees are in Boston this week at a suicide prevention conference – a joint collaboration between the Veteran's Administration and the Department of Defense – to try to answer that question.

"We usually get about 11,000 calls a month and we would expect with the economy the way it is and more servicemembers coming home that our calls would increase but they haven't, they've flattened out…that led us to believe that we're not reaching everyone," said Kemp. "We know that Thursdays are our highest call volume days, but we don't know why. We know that late winter and early spring our calls increase but, again, we don't necessarily know exactly why," said Kemp.

Still, the calls continue.

A typical exchange goes something like this. A soldier picks up the phone and begins the conversation this way "I'm not sure this is the right place but…" at that point they indicate some level of mild distress; perhaps it's a simple relationship problem, or maybe a job-related issue and then as the call continues they might say "Oh, and by the way, I have been diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)" or "by the way, my wife just left me." Kemp refers to these as the "by the way" calls, when the real reason for the crisis only becomes apparent deep into the conversation.