This is appalling. We send soldiers into war zones and then let them fend for themselves when they come home. WE're the richest country in the world, don't tell me we can't afford to take care of these people. (That goes for all the homeless vets, too.)

As a Viet Nam veteran under VA care I am thankful for the incredible support I have received from the VMAC mental health staff. Consider the numbers. The VA has a huge task and I feel they do a marvelous job!

I am a veteran of the Viet Nam war (1965-1967). I am also under the Minneapolis V.A. care. I have had 6 veteran friends (under the Minneapolis V.A.'s care) commit suicide in the past 17 years. I doubt if that is normal. I salute U.S. Rep. Tim Walz, D-Minn., for standing up for veterans in their hour of need. As for the Minneapolis V.A. it seems they are under a very tight budget they must obey. That seems to be a serious problem in some cases. In other cases it seems the hospital staff seem to feel the need to stay inside of the yearly budget. It doesn't make much differents, our veterans gave this nation their best. The Veterans Administration should do know less....

Our soldiers taking their lives is such an awful thing. Let us not forget that so many of our Vietnam vets were drafted and not volunteers. Though any vet deserves better than this. My only uncle died in Vietnam. He was drafted and I never got to meet the man. He died so many years ago, but it has been a black cloud over our family ever since. We have to do better for our soldiers, I am appalled at what is happening.

I'm an Iraq vet and current VA employee, I can say that although I am not at all impressed with the Minneapolis VAMC, I know for a fact that VA has one of the best health care systems in the nation...better than most private ones, actually. They have at least 4 hospitals that are in the top 200 in the nation. The VA desperately needs quality people to fill the ranks and, thanks to Congress wanting to slash spending and public salaries, they simply can't hire any. When the economy starts to really improve the VA will be in trouble because they will lose a lot of health professionals to the private sector. It's a disgrace that the government uses funds that are supposed to go to this sort of thing as a bargaining chip for political purposes. Civilians have absolutely no idea what veterans have sacrificed of themselves on their behalf...or of the financial, physical, and mental hardship they endure when they come home. I'm lucky I even have a job as an Iraq vet. Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have WAY higher unemployment rates than the national average. Last I checked it was somewhere around 27% And regular people are whining about 8% Boo hoo!

AirForceGuy - thank you for your thoughtful response. I would like to add to it. VA employees navigate 'complexity' every day. When we incorporate complexity into our frames for understanding social problems it becomes much easier in understanding a problems like this. It also forces us to withhold snap judgements any particular system. The challenge with complex problems is that there is no 'best practice' or 'procedure' that will adequately support all of our suffering veterans. This is one of the paradoxes of our human organizations. Human organizations create 'procedures' and 'best practices' that are applied to all of its clients. We create them because we sincerely believe that they will prevent complex human actions such as suicide. The problem is that given the level of complexity around the issue of suicide a strict list of 'procedures' and 'best practices' will inevitably fail some clients. What is needed are adaptive strategies that give mental health workers a menu of options to work with clients expressing suicidal ideation. Mental health workers need to be given flexibility to meet the needs of each client. Clients that are expressing suicidal ideation are usually experiencing a set of complicated mental health challenges. Yet the tendency in human organizations is to create procedures or policies which we have already determined will fails some clients. This complex reality forces us to ask three important questions at the same time: 1) How do you hold the VA accountable when something such as a suicide occurs among one of their clients when there aren't strict procedures to follow? 2) What happens when you have a procedure and the procedure fails the client? 3) What happens when you have a procedure, an employee determines the procedure isn't relevant, and the client commits suicide? There are no easy answers to these questions but they are all equally important. I encourage everyone to care about this issue but to withhold judgement of VA employees. They are managing complex mental health issues in a complicated bureaucracy.

"One in four veterans who commit suicide were receiving VA care, either in a hospital or through outpatient programs." And herein lies part of the problem. The VA is so grossly underfunded, that instead of being out front of the problem, only one in four of the veterans is even being seen by the VA. When troops come home the first thing they want to do is see their family. How unusual is that? Not at all. So what happens? They turn down the right to full physical and mental evaluation and the military or their state of residence then does not mandate that they come back at some future date say within the first year for a full examination. A previous poster praised Representative Walz for standing up for the veterans. What has he done for mandatory funding of the VA? I live in SD and our members of Congress like to brag on full funding of the VA. Full funding is not the same as mandatory funding. Full means that the VA is funded at what the VA itself requests. Mandatory funding means funding at the level it takes to do the job completely, in other words spending whatever it takes. We do that with fighting the wars, so why not in taking care of the troops when they come home. The VA has a tragic shortage of mental health professionals. They were not as needed in previous wars as they are now, because more of the troops who were physically wounded ended up dying. But so many who have survived their wounds now also have mental or emotional scars and need professional help. It is estimated that more than a half million of those who have fought in Iraq or Afghanistan have PTSD. If each mental health professional were to have 100 patients under their care, we would need to have 50,000 mental health professionals in the VA system. We have no where near that many. THe United States needs to make up its mind. Either stop fighting wars all over the world or take care of the troops when they come home with mandatory funding of the VA.

This is truly a tragic situation, but seriously, if someone is hellbent on killing themself, short of locking them in a padded room or 24-hour physical security, there is only so much that can be done. I really feel bad for these people and their families, but I do not think trying to find fault with someone else or a policy is going to help or change things. Sometimes life is unexplainable and incredibly difficult, and we shouldn't pretend we know and understand everything. But we also shouldn't be too quick to lay blame on others. My thoughts and prayers are with all people who suffer from such illnesses.

lannys9, The VA Medical system is not underfunded. They just like to pay huge salaries and benefits to administrators. They have built countless new clinics across the country. They have given billions in new funding over the last couple of years. They just don't practice medicine like the rest of the world. It's an assembly line that puts patients in inappropriate categories. That is only one of the many problems.

keithsmiller, I would suggest that the VA Medical system is far, far, far too complex, unnecessarily complex and I would ask why they are allowed to continue in such a wastefull and counterproductive mode. As for your statement that "that there is no 'best practice' or 'procedure' that will adequately support all of our suffering veterans", this is not true. The rest of the medical system in this country knows how to treat them. That is why the country is so angry with these unnecessary deaths. THEY ARE UNNECESSARY BECAUSE THE VA DOESN'T KNOW WHAT IT IS DOING! Eliminate the VA medical system and give Veterans medical cards. Combat Veterans and non-combat Veterans with combat injuries get 100% coverage, non-combat Veterans get a prorated coverage. LET US GO SEE REAL DOCTORS PRACTICING REAL MEDICINE. VETERANS ARE ENTITLED TO THAT AT LEAST.