Issue of firearms hinders veterans’ suicide prevention
The suicide rate among military veterans keeps edging higher, and to address it Congress passed a major bill this fall, named in honor of a Navy SEAL named Cmdr. John Scott Hannon, who was an outspoken proponent of veterans’ mental health treatment before he took his own life with a gun in 2018.
But at the last minute, lawmakers stripped the bill of a proven prevention technique that saves veterans’ lives and might have saved the life of Hannon. Why? Because the provision in question touched a third rail in Washington politics: the danger posed by firearms.
The Commander John Scott Hannon Veterans
Mental Health Care Improvement Act, now awaiting the president’s signature, still does things the commander’s family said he would be proud of: funding community organizations that work with veterans and scholarships to train more mental health professionals.
But before it was modified, the bill would also have required health care workers who treat veterans to be trained on how to talk with atrisk patients about the danger of having guns in the house and about how to reduce that risk — a strategy known as lethalmeans safety.
Evidence shows that reducing access to lethal means can drastically cut the risk of suicide. And for veterans, especially, the lethal means are overwhelmingly firearms.
The suicide rate among veterans has been climbing for more than a decade and is now roughly double that of the nation as a whole. Americans who die by suicide use a gun about half the time, but among veterans, the figure is 70%.
The lethalmeans provision that was stripped from the bill was introduced by Rep. Lauren Underwood, DIll. “I’m a public health nurse, so I’m trained to look at the data and design policies that are effective and evidencebased,” Underwood said.
Despite the setback, prevention experts say it makes sense to continue to expand lethalmeans safety, whether or not it is mandated by law.
“If you want to really make a dent in preventing suicide, this would have the most impact,” said Russell Lemle, the former chief psychologist for the San Francisco Veterans Affairs hospital system.