December 13, 2007 (LPAC)- A dramatic hearing by the House Veterans Affairs Committee Dec. 12 brought out into the open the fact that the Department of Veterans Affairs has the resources to collect sufficient data on mental health issues, including suicides, among veterans, so that the scope and magnitude of the problem could be understood, but is not doing so. The hearing was informed by a report, last month, by CBS News, that found that 6,256 veterans of all wars had committed suicide in 2005 alone, a stunning rate of 120 per week, with the highest rate of suicide being among veterans in the 20 to 24 age group. The VA responded to that report by attacking the way CBS compiled its figures, instead of responding to the obvious epidemic that the CBS report exposed. That pattern continued during yesterday's hearing.

Prior to top health officials of the VA testifying, the committee heard three hours of testimony from family members of soldiers who had committed suicide, and two authors on the subject of mental illness and returning war veterans. What came out of their testimony is that the VA and the Defense Department don't do enough to screen and track what happens to combat veterans after they return home, especially if they're in the National Guard or the Reserves, nor to track and treat mental illness problems. "This is a public health issue of monstrous proportions," noted one witness, and yet there is "surprise and denial" from official sources about the problem.

Committee chairman Bob Filner (D-Calif.) angrily interrupted the witness from the VA who was praising the agency's work, pointing out that nothing he was saying was addressing the magnitude of the problem or explaining why 6,000 veterans committed suicide in 2005. "We have evidence and data that we're failing our veterans as a nation, and you're acting as if everything is goodness and light," Filner said.

One veterans advocate commented to EIR afterwards that the actual VA policy on suicides is "don't look, don't find," and that's why they don't have the data on the magnitude of the problem.