women in the military are dying by Suicide at an alarming rate that is according to a new report from the nonprofit organization Disabled American Veterans it found between 2020 to 2021 the suicide rate among women veterans jumped 24% that is four times higher than male Veterans for perspective and vastly higher than their civilian counterparts Naomi matys an Air Force veteran and the assistant National legislative director for DAV is joining us via Zoom this morning good morning thanks for bein
g with us can you hear me Naomi can you hear me yes so sad can hear you great so sadly we hear a a lot about veteran suicide would you explain more about what specifically we're learning about women veterans and suicide sure uh dav's new report women veterans the journey to mental wellness it's a comprehensive look at the risk factors contributing to the Staggering suicide rate among women veterans and how the VA can do better it identifies gaps in care and offers more than 50 legislative and po
licy recommendations that can be implemented to save women's lives from our research we found that women veterans are at high risk for suicide um for things like milit because of contributing factors uh for things like military sexual trauma and I want to talk a little bit about the recommendations and you touched on this a little bit I mean are there specifically unique factors associated with women veterans that that you know essentially expose them to these feelings where they're at risk of o
f suicide yes um so there are unique risk factors that are associated with women veterans such as like I said military sexual trauma um which is inclusive of sexual harassment sexual assault while serving in the military um there are other things such as intimate partner violence um substance use disorder and mental health issues associated with reproductive Health you layer that on top of things like their exposure to combat and combat related PTSD and it really does become The Perfect Storm we
ll it sounds then that there is certainly a hesitancy and a fear perhaps on their part to report what's happening to them but also is there a Gap in in resources available to them so that they can work through some of these issues yes so so overall daav did find gaps in Access in training for Community Care Providers um Suicide Prevention efforts uh to include gender tailored care and those gaps um um there are they are inclusive of things like their V VA has an Innovative uh model predictive mo
del sort of an AI um and the algorithm uses uh males as the Baseline normative and it does not include things like military sexual trauma so in our 50 policy recommendations one of them is that they must fix that algorithm to include all of these unique factors for women veterans and definitely it uh MST or military sexual trauma should be a pillar of all Suicide Prevention efforts but surely in that the in the Ba's predictive model I so I I wish we had time to talk about every single one of the
50 recommendations are there any though that that can be implemented right now or very quickly to help immediately women veterans who are at a risk of suicide sure there are things one of the things that can really be implemented quite quickly is to have a a three-digit number similar to 988 um that connects to the National um I'm sorry 988 which connects to the national uh Suicide Hotline but a three-digit number that connects to the National Domestic hotline um that's something that we feel c
an be implemented right now to help women veterans that are dealing with intimate partner violence Naomi math is an Air Force veteran and the assistant legislative director for DAV joining us this morning eye openening information about women serving in the military thank you for your time this morning thank you so much to learn more they can go to women veterans. org we'll be right back
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