Depressed veterans received inadequate treatment and suicide prevention help from Veterans Affairs clinics, according to a government watchdog.
Major depressive disorder, “a particularly debilitating mental illness” that increases the risk of suicide, is diagnosed in about 10 percent of all veterans that receive care from VA clinics, according to the Government Accountability Office report. This number may be underestimated due to diagnostic coding errors.
About 7 percent of all U.S. adults experience the disease, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.
Almost all the diagnosed veterans were treated with antidepressants. However, the follow-up process did not conform to the VA’s own guidelines.
For example, veterans are required to receive a standardized assessment at the onset of the treatment and a second assessment after four to six weeks.
The standardized assessments obtain “information about symptoms and symptom severity,” and “improves diagnostic accuracy and aids treatment decisions,” the report said.
However, of the 30 cases of treated veterans reviewed by GAO, nearly 90 percent did not receive a second standardized assessment. Sixty percent never received any followup assessment.
Also, 33 percent didn’t have follow-up appointments within the required timeframe, while only 17 percent had second appointments after seven weeks to a year later. Two didn’t attend their second appointments.
Also, the VA’s suicide prevention efforts were harmed by missing or inaccurate data in their suicide autopsy forms, according to GAO.
The forms “are not being reviewed by VA officials at any level for accuracy, completeness, and consistence,” the report said.
Of the reviewed forms, 63 percent were incomplete, missing items such as prior psychiatric symptoms and the number of previous suicide attempts.
“This, in turn, could affect the suicide trends reported,” GAO said.
Some VA clinics argued that a blank space indicated zero attempts, but this lacked consistency.
