Blumenthal’s vet suicide prevention bill passes Senate

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., co-authored vet suicide-prevention bill that passed Senate.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., co-authored vet suicide-prevention bill that passed Senate.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s measure aimed at preventing suicide by returning military veterans passed the Senate 99-0 on Tuesday and appears headed to President Obama’s desk for enactment.

Near-unanimous Senate approval comes a month after the House approved a similar bill by voice vote. Co-authored with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Blumenthal’s bill, the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans (SAV) Act, is a rare achievement on Capitol Hill: Bipartisan legislation that won overwhelming support from both parties in a bitterly divided Congress.

“This breakthrough bipartisan step will help countless veterans overcome invisible wounds of war that lead to 22 tragic suicides every day,’’ said Blumenthal, who is the senior Democrat on the Senate Veterans’ Affair Committee. “We owe these wounded warriors more effective mental health care, so they can win the war against inner demons that come home from service.’’

The legislation follows in the wake of the scandal last year in which the VA hospital in Phoenix was found to be doctoring data to make it appear veterans were experiencing minimal delays in scheduling medical appointments.

A vote on the bill last year was held up by a single senator, Republican Tom Coburn or Oklahoma, who objected to the measure’s estimate $22 million pricetag. Coburn retired from the Senate last month, paving the way for a vote.

Once signed by the president, the law would require the Department of Veterans Affair to have its suicide-prevention programs monitored by an outside third-party, and create a “one-stop’’ web site for all VA mental health services.

It also would give psychiatrists and mental health professionals education-loan-repayment incentives to serve in VA medical centers for two years or more, and extend by a year combat eligibility for PTSD care at VA facilities.

A 2012 study by the Department of Veterans Affairs concluded that on average 22 veterans a day take their own lives. Many are older veterans of previous eras but anecdotally, suicide among younger veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts appears to be at acute levels.

Estimates put the number of veterans committing suicide annually at 8,000, more than the number of U.S. military personnel who died in Iraq and Afghanistan since U.S forces went into combat after 9/11.

In Connecticut, the study found that 16-to-20 percent of suicides over the previous decade involved veterans. And from October to December last year, 78 calls to the VA’s crisis line came from veterans in Connecticut, according to VA data.

Joanna Eldridge of Oxford, whose Afghanistan-veteran husband Justin Eldridge took his life in 2013, said she was hopeful the legislation would help other veterans.

“It’s at the very least a step in right direction,’’ said Eldridge, who was Blumenthal’s guest at the State of the Union address last month. “It was hard to watch (her husband, a Marine Corps Sergeant) struggle eight years in a system that wasn’t working for him and other vets. I know if this had been in place, it might’ve helped.’’

The law is named after a Houston veteran, Clay Hunt, who served as a Marine in Afghanistan and took his own life in 2011 at age 28. Suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder _ PTSD _ Hunt could not hold a job and suffered through a nightmarish VA response to his deteriorating condition.

The VA initially awarded him a disability rating of 30 percent. Hunt appealed but met a bureaucratic roadblock that included the VA losing his files.

Five weeks after Hunt’s death, the VA finally upped his disability rating to 100 percent.

Daniel Freedman