McClatchy: VA must act to curb combat-vet suicides, panel hears

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VA must act to curb combat-vet suicides, panel hears
By Chris Adams | McClatchy Newspapers

* Posted on Wednesday, December 12, 2007


Iraq War veteran Timothy Bowman, of the Illinois National Guard, committed suicide in November 2005. He had been home from the war only 8 months. | View larger image


WASHINGTON — The Department of Veterans Affairs needs to do more to find and treat returning soldiers who're at risk of killing themselves if the country is going to avert a rash of veterans' suicides, lawmakers and witnesses told a congressional hearing Wednesday.

In an often-combative hearing of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, the parents of a National Guardsman told how their son had slipped quickly from the war zone in Iraq to his old life in rural Illinois with virtually no attention paid to his precarious mental health.

Timothy Bowman, 23, killed himself at his family's business on Thanksgiving Day as his relatives gathered for an extended-family dinner in 2005.

Bowman's story was featured in an article that ran in McClatchy newspapers nationwide last February, detailing how the soldier's National Guard unit had returned from treacherous duty in Iraq and scattered to dozens of towns spread across five states. In the process, many were left to languish.

The McClatchy story also detailed how the VA, even by its own measures, wasn't prepared to give returning veterans the care that could best help them overcome destructive, and sometimes fatal, mental health ailments. VA mental-health care is uneven across the country, with some clinics offering little or no specialized mental-health care and many of the VA's hospital networks not offering special programs for post-traumatic stress disorder.

Timothy Bowman's parents, Mike and Kim, captivated the committee, and the audience erupted in applause as they testified.

"The VA mental-health system is broken in function and understaffed in operation," Mike Bowman said.

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