VA Starts Suicide Prevention Chat Room

The Veterans Administration has gone online with a "chat room" for possibly suicidal vets who may prefer reaching out for help via the Internet rather than in person or by phone.
 
"Veterans Chat," said Dr. Gerald Cross, the VA's acting undersecretary for health, is intended to reach veterans who may or may not already be enrolled in the VA health care system, and provide them with online access to the Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
 
The chat service provides one-on-one counseling, and may also be accessed by family members and friends, according to the announcement.
 
“It is meant to provide Veterans with an anonymous way to access VA’s suicide prevention services," Cross said in an official announcement of the chat service.
 
The chat room has been established even as the VA has come under fire over a booklet that some allege is intended to influence veterans to take their own lives if they become very sick.
 
Some veterans groups have hit back at the charges as attempts by anti-Obama administration critics to spread fear among vets.
 
The chat service is only the latest program the VA has implemented to combat suicide among vets.
 
The VA began operating a suicide-prevention telephone hotline in 2007, VA spokeswoman Katie Roberts told Military.com recently. Since then it has fielded more than 150,000 calls from veterans, their family members and even active-duty troops.
 
She said nearly 3,400 of the hotline's callers were convinced not to take their own life..
 
With the new chat service, vets can go online anonymously at www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org to chat with a trained VA counselor, he said. If the vet is determined to be in a crisis, the counselor can immediately transfer him or her to the Suicide Prevention Hotline for additional counseling and crisis intervention.
 
Once on the Web site, veterans reach the chat service via a tab on the left for "Veterans" and from there to "Veterans Resource Locator." The chat tab is on the right of that page; the page also includes the hotline phone number -- 1-800-273-TALK.
 
Vets enter an alias upon going into the chat room in order to remain anonymous. A counselor then comes online to provide information and respond to any requests or concerns the vet has, according to the VA announcement.
 
A counselor who determines that a vet is in crisis will encourage the vet to call the hotline, where a trained suicide prevention counselor will take over.
 
The pilot chat service began July 3 and has already had positive results, the VA said.
 
In one instance, the online counselor convinced a vet at risk to give him a home telephone number, and then remained in the chat room with the vet while the hotline staff called the number and talked to the veteran's mother.
 
The two were able to convince the veteran to be admitted to a medical facility for further treatment, the VA said.
 
Dr. Janet Kemp, VA’s National Suicide Prevention Coordinator at the VA Medical Center in Canandaigua, N.Y., said the chat service is not intended to be a crisis response line.
 
But, she said: “Chat responders are trained in an intervention method specifically developed for the chat line to assist people with emotional distress and concerns. We have procedures they can use to transfer chatters in crisis to the hotline for more immediate assistance.”