Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee.

Thank you for allowing me to appear before you. And thank you, Rep. Holt, for standing with me and my family.

I testify today because my son, U.S. Army Sgt. Coleman Bean, 25 and a veteran of two tours of duty in Iraq, shot and killed himself on Sept. 6, 2008. I am grateful for this opportunity; I have a duty to Coleman and I owe a debt to those with whom he served.  

It is my hope that these observations, which are drawn from a shared experience of loss, will be useful to you as you oversee the continued development and implementation of suicide-prevention programs.

First, we need to accept these facts: Many veterans come home to families and towns that are a far remove from VA hospitals or Vet centers. Some veterans at risk for suicide would not describe themselves as suicidal and some veterans will not or cannot use VA mental-heath services.

I believe it is crucial that the VA:

• Identify and publicize civilian counseling alternatives, including The Soldier’s Project, GiveAnHour and The National Veterans Foundation.
• Partner with civilian organizations to assure that all vets have immediate access to a wide range of mental-health care, and
• Encourage media outlets to publish local information on mental-health resources for veterans.

Second, I believe it is critical to implement a simple, straightforward public information campaign geared specifically to veterans’ family members and friends. It may fall to a grandmother, a best friend or a favorite neighbor to seek out help for a veteran who is suffering. Make information on available services easy to find and understand and publish it broadly. The suicide hotline number is not enough.

Help veterans help each other. The VA is confronting PTSD and suicide with new programs and new research, good and important work. But that hasn’t always been the case and there are vets who will tell you that they have had to scrap and fight for every VA service they’ve received. In addition to the official patient-advocacy complaint resolution program, please establish a peer body – made up of the most feisty, tenacious veterans. They will help assure that no vet gives up because it just got too hard or took too long to navigate the VA system.

My son joined the Army when he was 18, enlisting on Sept. 5, 2001. The terrifying tragedy of Sept. 11 reaffirmed for Coleman the rightness of his commitment. Home on leave, he took a pair of socks that had been lovingly laundered by his mother and refolded them to comport with Army specifications. It was his intention, Coleman said, to be a perfect soldier.

In the days following Coleman’s death, our family had the humbling opportunity to meet men with whom he had served; they traveled from around the country to be with us, and with each other. It was clear to us then that many of these men carried their own devastating burdens.  

I spent hours on the telephone, trying to identify services for these young men, reaching out first to the VA facilities in the states where they lived. My inquiries netted mixed results.

A VA representative in Texas, horrified when I describe our fears for a young veteran there, said “just tell me where he is and I will go there. I’ll get in my car right now.”

By contrast, a man in Maryland was firm: “If they won’t come here, we can’t help them,” he said.

That simply is not right. Of course we can help them and we can help their families. And it is our duty–not theirs–to figure out how.