Congress must do all possible to help veterans

When some veterans come home from the war zones, the war often comes back with them.

Too often, the war that lingers makes them one more casualty.

The suicide rate among veterans is about triple the average rate for the general population, and 22 of our veterans commit suicide every day.

Government may not be able to reverse this trend, but when war-thirsty government officials are largely responsible for the situation, it has to try.

On Tuesday, the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill named for Clay Hunt, an Iraq and Afghanistan veteran from Houston who killed himself in 2011.

The bill would require the Pentagon and Veterans Affairs Department to submit to independent reviews of their suicide prevention programs. It would also create a peer support and community outreach program to help service members as they transition to civilian life, and a website that would guide veterans through available resources. And it would repay the loan debt of students in psychiatry to more easily recruit them to work at the Veterans Administration.

Rep. Jeff Miller called the 22-a-day rate of veteran suicides “a heartbreaking statistic that has remained unchanged for more than a decade.”

By passing the bill, “the House took an important step toward putting an end to this grim status quo,” Miller said.

He is right. As a nation, we give much lip service to honoring veterans and thanking them for their service, but they have earned more than our gratitude after placing themselves in harm’s way to protect us from our often elusive enemies overseas.

When our veterans come home needing help, and government bureaucracies give them delays and indifference, it’s time to make some corrections.

That time was probably overdue when Marine Cpl. Hunt took his own life in 2011 after failing in a long struggle to get help.

Still, it’s heartening to see Congress taking some action to help veterans whose psychic wounds have not healed when their service ends.

U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce, R-New Mexico, said Hunt “was only one of many veterans who suffer from the effects of war and urgently require mental health services from the Veterans Administration.”

The Clay Hunt Act “will assist in the prevention of veterans’ suicide in New Mexico and across the country,” Pearce said.

The bill now goes to the Senate, where we hope it will be approved without delay.

Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the Clovis News Journal’s editorial board, which consists of Publisher Robert Arrowsmith and Editor David Stevens. All other views expressed on this page are those of their authors.