Obama orders VA to focus on mental health, with special emphasis on rural areas

President Obama signed an executive order Friday directing the Department of Veterans Affairs to expand mental health services and suicide prevention efforts, with a special emphasis on rural areas, which provide a disproportionate share of military members, Megan McCloskey of Stars and Stripes reports. Much of the order contains initiatives that were announced earlier in the summer by the VA.

The order instructs that any veteran with suicidal thoughts be seen by a mental-health professional within 24 hours, a standard already set by the VA but rarely met, McCloskey reports. In many areas of the U.S., psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers are sparse. To address this, the order directs the VA to partner with the Department of Health and Human Services to utilize community services to help meet demand. The agency will also create 15 pilot sites in underserved areas by contracting with local facilities, and it must create a plan for rural areas, which could include a mental health professional sharing program, McCloskey reports.

The VA put together a 21-person team in June to begin addressing these issues, and it has until June 2013 to hire just under 2,000 additional mental health staffers and the issues with pay, loan repayment, scholarships and partnerships with community-based providers to lure more mental health employees. (Read more)

American Legion post in rural Connecticut town renovates its building to house homeless veterans

An American Legion post in a small Connecticut community has renovated its building to house 15 homeless veterans, reports the radio outlet of the Connecticut Public Broadcasting Network.

Post Cmdr. Mark Czmyr and his father,
Navy vet William Czmyr, had the idea.
(Photo by Lucy Nalpathanchil)

Jewett City, population about 3,000, is "a rural town that lost its major textile industry when the mills closed after World War II. It's a quiet community with a Main Street that's quintessential New England," Lucy Nalpathanchil reports for WNPR and National Public Radio.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is in the third year of an initiative to end homelessness, but the biggest challenge remains in rural communities where the VA has had a hard time connecting with veterans, Nalpathanchil reports. "For example, it could take a veteran in Jewett City more than an hour to get to one of Connecticut's two VA hospitals."

Laurie Harkness, director of the VA's Errera Center in Connecticut, "says Jewett City could be a model for other communities," Nalpathanchil reports. "She says ideas like this come up all the time, but this rural town has something not found in very many places." She told WNPR, "This is the first project that I've ever been involved in where there was no 'not in my backyard.' Everybody supported it."