Lessons Learned from Mental Health Enhancement and Suicide Prevention Activities in the Veterans Health Administration

Since October 1, 2008, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has recorded information on nearly 46,000 suicide events among more than 38,000 individuals. Information on suicide events, including death from suicide and suicide attempts, is available on a near “real time” basis and has been used to inform clinical management of high risk Veterans, identify periods of increased risk, measure the impact of prevention programs on suicide and suicide attempts, and identify changes in the distribution of risk across populations and time. In addition to routinely collecting information on all known suicide attempts and deaths through standardized Sucide Behavior Reports, the Department of Veterans Affairs is collaborating with all U.S. states and territories to directly obtain individual-level suicide data to increase understanding of suicide among all Veterans of U.S. military service and has co-sponsored the development of a Suicide Data Repository in collaboration with the Department of Defense. Topics covered during this presentation include an overview of suicide prevention programs in the Department of Veterans Affairs, a review of existing systems for surveillance of suicide and suicide attempts, an overview of the newly developed DoD/VA Suicide Data Repository and results from preliminary analysis of data obtained from state partners.