Recent Phoenix VA Veteran Suicides Reveal Facility Problems
Another Phoenix VA whistle blower confirmed the facility’s mental health professionals are not preventing veteran suicides by allowing them to walk out of the facility to their own demise. Even better, one of the whistle blowers provided an audio recording proving problems in the facility (watch the clip above).
RELATED:
- Whistle blower comes forward claiming VA mishandles suicidal vets
- Phoenix VA whistleblower claims retaliation after being placed on leave
Five veterans just walked out in one week of January alone. According to the whistleblower, in December, 2 such veterans did commit suicide. When VA is negligent and that negligence results in a suicide, VA has been charged $300,000 for failing to use adequate care to save the veteran.
Last night, Fox News 10 and ABC News 15 released an audio clip of VA health care workers admitting, “five suicidal vets walked out of the hospital” in just the week preceding January 23, 2015. The chief social worker responded, “We are just lucky nothing bad has happened yet.”
Notice, they did not call the veterans or their family members. They did not seek to put the veterans in a safety hold within the mental health facility to ensure the person did not commit suicide.
No. Instead, the chief social worker called Phoenix VA staff “lucky” that the veterans had not hurt themselves yet.
Is this the kind of standard of care administered by for suicidal veterans.
Some states have found Department of Veterans Affairs liable for wrongful death. VA paid one family over $300,000 following a suicide where VA failed to keep the suicidal veterans safe. This is negligence.
Email me at Krause Law if you or a loved one has been a victim of such negligence. I really want to hammer VA over such failures at their facilities.
They Just accomplished their job! (Have us Killed /get rid of US)
“Delay, deny, wait till they Die” (Rick Weidsman/VVA)
They need to be awarded for that!
VAM
I found myself in a VA Hospital psych ward in 1978, after service in Vietnam and clandestine Cold War operations. When doctors tried to get to me to give details about my service, I refused and called Naval Investigative Service. They sent a Special Agent right out to the VAMC to debrief me. The first thing he said to me when we were alone was “We are glad you remembered your instructions. The VA is one of the most productive sources for foreign intelligence agencies.”
After three days of meeting with me he showed the doctors an “eyes only” cover story on me and I was rated 100% P&T shortly thereafter.
Now the phone calls of all psych ward hospitalized vets are strictly controlled and I could never make the same call to NCIS today that I made in 1978.
I work for the VA as a Medical Support Assistant. I actually have a degree in Psychology and about a year’s worth of graduate school courses in Mental Health Counseling. I actually quit the program halfway and changed directions (towards graduate work in Public Policy) when I realized that I didn’t want to work in Mental Health on a full time basis. (Alot of it honestly had to do with my own experience working for the VA)
Now saying all that, most of the MSA’s are the tip of the spear when it comes to Mental Health crises. We are the first designated VA reps these veterans see when they come in. Unfortunately, WE are not adequately trained to deal with every unique case. My work center got lucky with me because I knew exactly how to respond based on education and just sheer years of experience dealing with some of the most complex cases. Most MSA’s are not hired/paid to do this type of work. IF You really want to do a public service to my fellow veterans, place a qualified Mental Health Counselor/Technician at every Primary/ER/Mental Health check in counter at all times.
Trust me, i don’t care how much lip service upper mgmt pays our employees (and the public) as to the level of training we as Medical Support Assistants receive, we do NOTr have the qualifications to deal with such complex cases. If a veteran comes screaming and yelling at you and threatening self harm, most of my colleagues just freeze. Most of us were hired because of our service connection (which alot struggle with PTSD themselves and tend to have situations like these exacerbate their struggle rather than help it). We are for better or for worse the first faces they see and if we aren’t able to provide them with the basic level of care they need within the first five minutes, you are NOT only providing a disservice to them, but also endangering them and those around them.
On December 8, 2014, a VA Clinical Psychologist told me and my wife that I am a “danger to myself”. He allowed me to walk out of the VA facility even though I admitted I have major problems with suicidal issues. We specifically discussed a certain military psychiatrist and the VA doctor looked him up on the internet, finding him immediately though I have searched many times looking for proof of that military doctor’s specialty. Just before I went to this VA psychologist, after years of searching by using only his last name, I finally got a document from a US Senator that showed his first name. I still could not find anything about him on the internet about this VA doctor, even with his first name, but the VA doctor immediately did, in front of me and my wife. One thing about this is my alleged delusion that the military doctor was a Russian saboteur/spy, and then it turns out, as we just found out, his first name is Ivan! The VA doctor laughed and smiled over the irony that this doctor is in fact Russian though the VA treated me as insane and delusional for many years for me claiming he is Russian. Ivan was interested in what goes on in the Top Secret Comm Centers I worked in in the Marines, and as a Russian he had the perfect cover to get classified extremely sensitive information from Comm Center men such as myself. We explained to this VA doctor in December how Ivan had drugged and hypnotized me and told me to commit suicide, and how other Marines had actually done so, after he got everything out of them that he could get, while setting them up as Section 8’s, which means framed to look delusional and insane in case we ever had a chance to tell anyone about Ivan and his little program at Camp Pendleton. This goes on and on, but my point is, it has been a monumental struggle for me to keep from doing what Ivan programmed me to do, and he was a very big success at his work. I do things backwards, the opposite of what I intend to do, and have been terrorized for a very, very long time by the VA, and civilian authorities as has my family. One good thing is that the VA doctor told me and my wife that I could talk about anything I wanted to, and he had been told by the Patient Advocate about our complaint that my wife and I were threatened with arrest, prison, execution if we said anything about my PTSD related experiences in the service. This VA doctor did not do what all the other VA doctors have done, and it is because of Ben Krause and also because there is a new VA Secretary that the VA knows is not standing for all the old BS anymore. I actually went to an M.D. at the VA time I frame that I saw this VA Clinical Psychologist, and she led us to believe that because my condition is so in peril that we could expect a decision on my claim in two weeks as it was being put through some kind of special expediting as I am unable to care for myself or be safe. That was over two months ago. These two new VA doctors were very kind in one sense but as usual nothing gets done. The VA from our impression is hoping I will kill myself, or the police will kill me, because they know the SWAT team was at our house recently and the police and other authorities are terrorizing us constantly. This liberal county hates vets, they have by far, the lowest per vet medical expenditures in the entire state. These two VA doctors both acknowledged the unusual nature of my claim for Regular Aid and Attendance for mental reasons and both said they were putting me in for it, and approved of my wife being my caregiver, which she has been for all more than 8 years of our marriage. The VA and the military and authorities have gotten together and destroyed my life and my family’s life, as they did to my previous three wives. They have told all of my wives to leave me including my current wife, and the previous three did leave me because “he is a hopeless case” and will never get better. Wife number 4 is way past giving up on me but for some reason has not totally yet which is a surprise. Ben, you say you want to hammer the VA about this kind of stuff and I hope you will look into this. I don’t want to piss off the two doctors who were so nice, and I do not want to be locked up, but it would be nice to get this part of my claim through once and for all. I am 100% service-connected for PTSD but I do need a full-time caregiver and the VA needs to stand up and recognize my wife in an official way, before Dr. Ivan gets his way on this. I have helped a lot of vets and am doing so now with a vet who played football on the Marine football team and got all kinds of head injuries, and he is a total mess but has never gotten any help or ever even been to the VA for anything because he is so brain damaged from football head injuries in the Marines. I have saved many sucidal patients lives when working at psych hospitals years ago after the Marines. I moved to across the street from the psych hospital where I worked, I carried a voice pager and regular pager 24 hours a day 7 days a week, and actually enjoyed going out and rescuing suicidal people while working with the police and ambulance personnel and the hospital as part of my job. The doctor VA psychiatrist who called me and my wife a while back screaming in a wild rage, shortly before the new VA secretary was installed, was calling me delusional about the suicide programming by Dr. Ivan, but at that time I still did not yet have that first name. Also, the last VA doctor clinical psychologist was able to pull up the bio on Dr. Ivan Franklin and see that he was educated in Russia. The doctor screaming in a rage at us was trying to get me to kill myself, and he should be fired along with other assholes who have done the same to me and countless other vets in this county and even down at San Francisco VA Medical Center and the weird anti-vet shit they do to vets who are suicidal down there. Ben, my number is 530 778-4844 if you want to talk about this. We want this Reg. Aid and Attendance to go through so we can get competent private medical care which is beyond clear I will never get from the VA, and then we will move away from all of this shit. Ben, please call me, 530 778-4844. God bless you.
Bruce maybe this link might help you out it leads to social security informational page on how people with 100% VA disability meet the physical requirements to receive Social Security Disability. Social Security also has a care giver program. Getting another Federal Agency involved may shed a little Sunshine on your problem.
https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v74n3/v74n3p1.html
I know that life can be rough at times and that the VA can really get into your head and make you feel this great sense of injustice. Sometimes you need to stop and look at what they are doing to You and ask yourself if they are doing it on purpose. You may want to look at any medication they have prescribed to you and read up on the side effects.
Beat Ivan by throwing a little sunshine on your problem by getting another Federal Agency involved it can really mess with their game plan. What you want to do is also file for a copy of your medical records from each VA Facility that you have been treated at. Then when Social Security gets a copy from the same VA Facilities you can get a copy of what they received at the SSA office. I guarantee there will be some pages missing.
Bruce what do you think of some of the articles that Ben has been posting?
The ones that hit home for me the most recently were regarding the Tomah VAMC. After reading some of the articles here I had to learn more. What I found is very distributing. They using veterans to test the affect of a drug combination of Suboxone and Synthetic Morphine (Tramadol). To do it they are separating veterans from loved ones by addicting them to Opioids. When the veteran hits rock bottom and he goes to them for help he is theirs because his loved ones all see the patient as addicted to drugs.
Since Synthetic Morphine is for moderate to sever pain you know that these Veterans really need someone to step in and get them the medical care they really need. Not use them as laboratory animals for research.
As of August 18th, 2014 the previously unscheduled synthetic Morphine (Tramadol) trade name Ultram was added to the list of Controlled Substance Act as a schedule IV drug which makes it the only opioid a doctor can prescribe for 5 refills within a 6 month period.
As of October 16th, 2014 all hydrocodone became listed as a schedule II Narcotic that require a new prescription every 30 days. Which also means that all Opiates are now schedule II or schedule I.
Bruce what I really find amazing is that the mainstream media is portraying the growing rate of narcotic prescription at Tomah VAMC as an isolated incident it’s not. Were at war and Congressional Research Reports for boots on the ground and casualties show a direct correlation to the increase of opiates prescribed.
https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RS22452.pdf
https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R40682.pdf
Sorry I meant to say “We were at War”
while this article may not have too much to do with the VA investigations I received this in my email today and strongly believe that disabled veterans should read this. It shocked the hell out of me. https://enenews.com/doctor-removed-6-thyroids-recent-months-uss-reagan-sailors-exposed-fukushima-fallout-officer-sick-soldiers-everywhere-many-hospitals-san-diego-hawaii-dont-whats-going-video