Opinion | Building a safety net to protect our veterans from suicide – By Margaret Harrell (Military Times) / Aug 14, 2023
While even one death is too many, our veterans continue to die from suicide at significantly higher rates — 57% — than those who have not served; and it is the second leading cause of death for veterans under the age of 45. Yet there is hope that we as a country can finally marshal our collective resources to diminish what has seemed like an intractable crisis.
The answers lie, in part, in nonprofit and civic organizations understanding what works, and in realizing that they can’t do it alone.
First, it’s essential to identify the key strategies we must implement if we hope to avert suicide. These fall into two categories requiring different kinds of interventions. One is suicide prevention, which is often used as a blanket statement but whose measurable results are focused on mental health. The second is what I have termed “suicide protection,” which also includes practical solutions for financial insecurity, healthcare and access to communities of shared interests and support.
As a social scientist who relies on evidence to make funding decisions, I look at a program’s desired outcome and the analytics an organization can provide in achieving this. While many nonprofits express intent to prevent suicide, a profoundly important goal, we know from clinical practice guidelines by the Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration that cognitive behavioral therapy is the only approach in the preventive toolkit with a strong enough efficacy for those organizations to recommend it.
