Despite promises to prioritize lethal means safety in their suicide prevention efforts, Veterans Affairs officials aren\u2019t focusing enough on the issue, according to new findings released Thursday by a government watchdog.<\/p>\n
The problems outlined in a new VA inspector general report included clinicians not completing training on firearms safety, clinicians not using the training in appointments with patients, and administrators not reinforcing the importance of the issue with follow-up training and guidance.<\/p>\n
\u201cGiven the prevalence of firearm-related suicidal behavior among veterans and the effectiveness of diminished access to firearms in the reduction of suicide, suicide risk assessment and safety planning should include both firearms access and discussion of safe storage,\u201d the report stated.<\/p>\n
\u201cFailure to adequately assess firearms access and discuss safe storage of firearms may contribute to a failure to promote distance between the patient and access to firearms as a means of suicide.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Yeah, because if everyone at the VA is asking you a ton of questions about your firearms, you’re gonna tell the truth. A combat vet with PTSD that needs a gun under the pillow to sleep at night won’t have a lot of trust fostered by a clinician telling him to lock his security blanket up in a gun safe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here we go again. The VA is said to need to spend\u00a0more\u00a0energy on talking about gun safety training to combat veteran suicides? If there’s one group of people you don’t need to waste time on gun safety with, it’s a group of veterans. Every single veteran has already received firearms safety training in some form […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[213,177,86,118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-your-tax-dollars-at-work","category-dumbass-bullshit","category-veteran-health-care","category-veterans-issues"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ozh1-yMg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/664"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=133688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133688\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=133688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=133688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=133688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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