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The White House has been sounding the alarm on suicide among current and former members of the military. In a recent speech<\/a>, President Joe Biden said that an average of 17 veterans kill themselves every day \u2014 meaning that the number of veterans who die by suicide each day\u00a0is nearly equal to the number of U.S. troops killed in combat in 2020 and 2021<\/a> combined.<\/p>\n Military and elected officials are making unprecedented efforts to address suicide in the military. The Defense Department set up an independent panel to assess the scope of the crisis and advise steps toward prevention, while Congress has pushed for bipartisan legislation that would devote billions of dollars to veterans\u2019 mental health as well as improvements to the VCL system that included its incorporation into 988, the suicide hotline formerly known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline\u00a0that\u00a0launched in July.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cOur country\u2019s military and federal government must ensure this critical lifesaving resource is easily accessible for veterans and active-duty service members in crisis,\u201d Rep. Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J., a Navy veteran who serves on the House Armed Services Committee and spearheaded the changes to the VCL, told The Intercept. \u201cIt is unacceptable that a majority of the Navy homepages do not contain the required link to the Veterans Crisis Line.\u201d<\/p>\n The audit report says the Navy Office of Information, or CHINFO, did not provide clear guidance or sufficient oversight to ensure compliance on Navy websites. However, Charlie Spirtos, a Navy spokesperson, told The Intercept that blame lies with individual commanders who have failed to enforce the mandate.<\/p>\n \u201cCHINFO is the lead for developing policy for publicly accessible website content across the Navy, and for maintaining cognizance for content of publicly accessible websites across the Navy,\u201d he wrote in an email. But he said compliance \u201crests on individual commanders, commanding officers, and officers in charge.\u201d It is not clear how the Navy enforces compliance with the regulations. A Navy spokesperson, speaking on the condition of anonymity, did not have an answer for The Intercept.<\/p>\n Spirtos also said that the nearly 80 websites under CHINFO\u2019s purview were now in compliance with the Navy\u2019s VCL regulations, but after repeated questions from The Intercept, Cmdr. Reann Mommsen, a Navy spokesperson, clarified that an unspecified number of homepages were missing the VCL icon.<\/p>\n \u201cA review and update is underway to ensure all Navy websites contain the logo,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Since 2007<\/u>, the Veterans Crisis Line has fielded more than 6.2 million calls, providing 1.1 million referrals<\/a> to VA suicide prevention coordinators and more than 233,000 dispatches of emergency services.<\/p>\n Many veterans have reported that they were able to get the help they needed when calling the hotline. In a 2021 study in the journal Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior<\/a>, 87 percent of users expressed satisfaction with the VCL, almost 82 percent found it helpful, and nearly 73 percent said that it kept them safe. Of those with suicidal thoughts, almost 83 percent said that calling the hotline helped stop them from killing themselves. A study from earlier this year in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine<\/a> found that callers had five times greater odds of a reduction in distress, almost five times greater odds of a reduction in suicidal ideation, and 11 times greater odds of a reduction in suicidal urgency by the end of the call.<\/p>\n Research also shows that promoting the VCL increases the likelihood that veterans in crisis will call. A 2016 study of VCL advertising campaigns found that \u201cmessaging was associated with help seeking<\/a>,\u201d which supports significant associations found in a 2014 study between public messaging and an increased awareness and use of crisis lines among veterans.<\/p>\n Since 2014, the Secretary of the Navy has mandated that all Navy homepages contain an icon and link to the Veterans Crisis Line. A 2020 Navy Suicide Prevention Program handbook<\/a> also states that all Navy websites must display a \u201cLife Is Worth Living\u201d icon, hyperlinked to the Military Crisis Line, or MCL, for active-duty personnel. However, according to Spirtos, that requirement is defunct.<\/p>\n The 2019 Navy audit examined 58 Navy homepages and found that 36 were \u201cnoncompliant,\u201d 27 used an\u00a0outdated \u201cLife Is Worth Living\u201d icon, eight used the VCL icon, four used both icons, one used a \u201cSuicide Prevention\u201d icon, and 18 had no icon at all. (The report does not list which websites were surveyed by auditors.) The audit also discovered that the URL to the required VCL icon within the regulations<\/a> was broken.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Research shows that promoting the Veterans Crisis Line increases the likelihood that veterans in crisis will call.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n The Naval Audit Service found that 23 of 36 noncompliant commands were unaware of the requirement; the other 13 did not respond.<\/p>\n The Naval Audit Service recommended that CHINFO \u201cestablish internal controls and oversight to ensure all Navy Web sites display the required Veterans Crisis Line link\u201d by September 30, 2021, to which the Department of the Navy Chief of Information agreed.<\/p>\n But almost one year since the target date passed, the Navy has still failed to comply with its own regulations, according to a follow-up investigation by The Intercept.<\/p>\n When The Intercept began its own survey this spring of 58 Navy homepages \u2014 including Navy.mil and some of the largest commands \u2014 it found 57 percent without a \u201cLife Is Worth Living\u201d icon, a VCL icon, or a working VCL link.<\/p>\n After reaching out to CHINFO for comment on the findings, compliance radically changed. Screenshots available through the Internet Archive\u2019s Wayback Machine show that just before or just after The Intercept submitted questions, Naval Special Warfare Command and U.S. Naval Ship Repair Facility and Japan Regional Maintenance Center, for example, did not display the VCL link. Now working links appear on those homepages as well as 48 others surveyed by The Intercept. However, 87 percent of the 58 websites still do not have the VCL icon.<\/p>\n For example, the homepage of Navy.com<\/a>, the Navy\u2019s recruitment website, lacks both a VCL link and icon. The homepage of the Secretary of the Navy<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 the office that issued the VCL regulation \u2014 provides an outdated \u201cLife Is Worth Living\u201d icon that links to the 988 hotline rather than the VCL.<\/p>\n Spirtos said that since the audit, websites that were once overseen by CHINFO are now on a new web host provided by Defense Media Activity, the Pentagon\u2019s internal media and public relations organization.<\/p>\n \u201cAll of these websites comply with the Veterans Crisis Line link requirement,\u201d\u00a0Spirtos told The Intercept. But Mommsen later acknowledged that while links were present on all the homepages, the VCL logo is not. The Intercept found that out of those 79 websites<\/a> under Defense Media Activity\u2019s purview, just 17 \u2014 or 21.5 percent \u2014 fully comply with the VCL regulations.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n American flags representing each of the 1,892 veterans and service members who died by suicide in 2014 stand on the National Mall in March 2014 in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n \nPhoto: Ken Cedeno\/Corbis via Getty Images<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/p>\n While the<\/u> Veterans Crisis Line has been a benefit to many former military personnel, outside experts and government watchdogs for years have highlighted management and quality control issues, including long wait times, crisis calls sent to voicemail, and improperly trained staffers<\/a>. Recent investigations by the VA Office of Inspector General have also highlighted lethal shortcomings. In 2018, for example, a veteran died of an overdose<\/a> of alcohol and drugs after speaking to two crisis-line responders who failed to contact local authorities. The next year, a veteran shot and killed a family member<\/a> after talking with a VCL staffer. The inspector general found that the \u201cresponder\u2019s management of \u2026 [the] call was insufficient and delayed.\u201d<\/p>\n Congress has taken significant steps to provide resources and improvements to the VCL and mental health care for veterans in general. Last year, Sherrill, the New Jersey representative, helped lead\u00a0bipartisan efforts<\/a> to require an outside evaluation of the VCL’s training curriculum, improve responder guidance for high-risk callers, and increase quality control over calls. The efforts also enabled the VCL to become part of 988, which aims to be a more professionalized system that can not only assist callers but also dispatch mobile response teams.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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