Washington Post<\/a>: Trump\u2019s VA vowed to stop veteran suicide. Its leaders failed to spend millions set aside to reach those at risk.<\/p>\nBy Lisa Rein<\/p>\n
\nThe Trump administration said from its first days that preventing suicide was its top clinical priority for veterans.<\/p>\n
The performance of its national outreach campaign shows otherwise, though, because of a leadership vacuum at the Department of Veterans Affairs and nonexistent means to measure effectiveness, a new report by the Government Accountability Office found.<\/p>\n
As the number of veterans taking their own lives climbed, VA\u2019s media outreach plunged in fiscal years 2017 and 2018 \u2014 with fewer social media posts, public service announcements and paid advertisements compared with the agency\u2019s efforts during the Obama administration, auditors said.<\/p>\n
About 20 veterans die by suicide every day, VA data shows. That\u2019s nearly twice the suicide rate among Americans who did not serve in the military.<\/p>\n
VA set aside $6.2 million this year alone to advertise its crisis hotline \u2014 the centerpiece of its suicide-prevention efforts \u2014 online, on billboards, buses and trains, and via local and national radio commercials. But as of September, the agency had spent $57,000 \u2014 less than 1 percent of that budget, auditors wrote.<\/p>\n
By not reaching as many vulnerable veterans as it could have, the Veterans Health Administration, the agency\u2019s health-care arm, \u201cmay not have exposed as many people in the community, such as veterans at risk for suicide, or their families and friends, to its suicide prevention outreach content,\u201d the report concluded.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
(MORE<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Trump administration said preventing suicide was its top clinical priority for veterans. We now know that was a lie. Trump\u2019s Department of Veterans Affairs set aside $6.2 million this year alone to advertise its crisis hotline to reach vulnerable veterans, but it only spent less than 1 percent of that budget. Washington Post: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":263,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1003204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-release"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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