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Atlanta VA Holds Mental Health Summit

August 16th, 2013

The Atlanta VA Medical Center held a mental health summit Friday. The summits are being held nationwide with the goal of improving mental health outreach and treatment for veterans. The summit was closed to the media and comes shortly after two reports by the Inspector General linked three veteran deaths to mismanagement in the Center’s mental health programs.

Officials say about 200 veterans, mental health specialists, volunteer organizations and law enforcement officers attended the summit. Atlanta VA Medical spokesman Greg Kendall explained why the media was not allowed to attend.

“The whole idea was to have an environment where all the participants felt comfortable sharing information, coming up with solutions to help us move forward in providing the best care to all of our veterans.”

Dr. Monique Hunter is the Atlanta VA Local Recovery Coordinator.

“We talked about focusing on improving two-way communication because that’s something that both the VA staff and the community partners represented felt we could definitely work on, and we also focused on the importance of building relationships first as we provide care for our veterans.”

Both are important according to Vondell Brown, an Iraq war veteran and manager with the wounded warrior project.

He says VA mental health providers need to focus on being more empathetic and giving veterans more individualized care.

“I think it’s getting better, but I have warriors I deal with everyday that probably need a little more hands on, they need more calls, they need more face time with providers.”

And Brown says Center Director Leslie Wiggins gave veterans some assurances.

“She made promises and pledges that she would be personally accountable for moving forward with some of the suggestions that came out some of the breakout sessions.”

The summit comes about a week after a U.S. Senate field hearing held in response to the recent Inspector General reports.