Ken Smith, right, and Frank Reynolds
For many veterans and military service members, the trauma they witness can lead to mental health problems that often go untreated which attributes to high suicide rates nationwide.
Mental health and suicide is often not talked about among veterans for fear it shows weakness. But according to the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, nearly 20 veterans per day commit suicide, and veterans make up nearly 18 percent of national adult suicides.
According to the Department of Health and Human Services Division of Public and Behavioral Health in a study conducted in 2013, one Nevada veteran dies from suicide every 2.8 days, with 130 committing suicide in 2013, and four people are admitted to a hospital every 24 hours for a suicide attempt.
Sixty percent of veteran suicides occur with vets ages 55 years and older, compared to only 36 percent of all Nevada suicides.
To combat this, the Carson City Sheriff’s Office has created the V.I.P.S. for Veterans program.
“We saw a need in the community from a law enforcement perspective for unique services geared toward vets,” said Carson City Sheriff Ken Furlong. “There has been much talk and collaborations with other agencies to target suicide rates related to veterans. We believed that by providing or offering services before crisis levels we would have an impact.”
Veterans volunteer to help other vets by being on call to help listen when needed.
“If someone needs me, I can go over there to be a type of Band-Aid and just hear their story,” said Frank Reynolds, one of the members of the program and the president of the Carson City Veterans Community Council.
“I am not there to arrest anyone, I am there for them. I want to try to give them resources (to help).”
The program, created by Sheriff’s Office volunteer coordinator Ken Smith, is designed to have volunteers provide a number of services to veterans, including wellness checks, medical transportation, and a referral system for a number of problems the vets may face.
“We want to make sure they aren’t being neglected,” Smith said. “We will help them get help. Do they need food? Do they need mental health care? We just want to be able to assist them any way we can.”
Smith said a lot of their services will most likely revolve around an “Are you OK?” model, meaning they will check in with vets around the community to make sure they are getting the basic level of care, are eating and are in good mental and physical health and hygiene.
“There is so much we can do, so many of us at the Sheriff’s Office are veterans and we sat down and said we just need to help each other out,” Smith said. “I don’t want a veteran to be in need and get overlooked because they think no one cares.”
The program is in conjunction with the Retired Senior Volunteer Program. All the volunteers will be trained as Sheriff’s Office volunteers so they can handle both the V.I.P.S for Vets calls and other emergency calls.
Smith hopes that the volunteers will be other veterans, but anyone can join.
Many veterans return home from the military face problems such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or survivor’s guilt and often it can be overwhelming, Veteran Affairs says. Reynolds said the program could be helpful because struggling veterans are more willing to talk with other veterans who can empathize with their experiences.
“We had a counselor come and talk to us about suicide and he said ‘I understand what you go through’ and its like no, did you go through what we did or did you read reports on it?” Reynolds said.
He said he is able to relate because he has experienced some of the same feelings, such as survivor’s guilt.
“It is so hard to deal with living when you know your best friend died (in combat with you) because it’s like I survived, I’m not a hero, I just survived,” Reynolds said. “That guilt is what kept me in because no one else understood (what I was feeling) and it is so hard to overcome when you get out. It is an indescribable feeling.”
“With survivors guilt and PTSD, you see all of the faces of those you killed and lost and once you get out those issues pack up in the back of your head so you could be watching a movie, a Disney movie, and get PTSD. But we need to just remember that we need to take care of the person who survived too and just don’t let up on them.”
But those feelings are what help Reynolds build a deeper and more genuine connection with the individuals he sees.
“If he’s a combat hardened vet, he wants to talk about that (with someone like me) because I know how he felt,” Reynolds said. “But it is still hard to get them to talk. Why? I don’t think I have an answer for that.”
This connection is especially important, because it helps Reynolds transfer the individual to other mental health services.
“(They trust me) because I know how they felt so then it is my job to validate the next person in line,” Reynolds said. “So I can be like ‘hey here is a friend of mine who can help get you what you need, and you can trust them because I trust them.”
Reynolds said that people so often avoid the topic of suicide that he directly asks the individuals about it and that will usually stop and make them think about their decision.
“In the military you are taught to skirt around the issue, but I will ask them ‘how do you want to do it?’ so it makes them think more and it brings an awareness to them,” Reynolds said. “You don’t have to mother them, just talk to them and check up on them to make sure everything is OK.”
“Suicide builds up, it is not just a wake up and kill myself right now, it may start at 6 a.m. and end at 6 p.m., so we have to learn to disrupt that buildup to let that person know that there is still good. I want people to know we are here to help.”
For information on Carson City veteran resources, visit http://carson.org/residents/veterans. To sign up for the V.I.P.S. for Vets as a volunteer or veteran, contact Ken Smith at 775-283-7810 or RSVP’s veterans VIP coordinator Lyndia Todoroff at 775-687-4680, extension 119.
