The Veterans Administration has issued a news release updating their knowledge base about Veteran suicide. [LINK HERE] While news about suicide is never good, I am heartened to read that the VA is developing "Predictive Modeling" for the purpose of identifying those Veterans who have a high risk of attempt. I explained the model I believe should be followed in place of the existing programs, but did not think of Predictive Modeling to describe it.
We have a lot of data that we can use to identify individuals who are at high risk because of the trauma burden they acquired as children. With use of a Predictive Model, we can target healing interventions earlier than waiting for symptoms to appear.
And if you need any more convincing that what we are doing isn't working in the field of suicide prevention, the second to last paragraph of the press release states:
"Suicide is an issue that affects all Americans. Recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data reported in April 2016 that from 1999 through 2014 (the most recent year with data available from CDC), suicide rates increased 24 % in the general population for both males and females."
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