Six days after being removed by police from a veterans hospital in Washington, the man died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The internal watchdog for the Department of Veterans Affairs said Tuesday that a veteran who came through the department’s medical center in Washington last year seeking psychiatric treatment died by suicide a few days later, after a doctor there ordered him forcibly removed and was heard saying that she did “not care” if he killed himself.
The report, which details many failings at a center that has been the subject of repeated criticism, comes a few weeks after Robert L. Wilkie, the secretary of veterans affairs, told a conservative media outlet that “President Trump is the first president since the 1890s who recognized the scourge of veteran suicide.”
The number of veterans who die by suicide is roughly 20 a day, about one and a half times more often than those who have not served in the military.
But even as the department struggles to lower those numbers, the case at the Washington D. C. V. A. Medical Center last year appears egregious. A patient in his 60s, who had a long history of panic attacks, pain killer addiction and various injuries came into the hospital’s emergency room.
He described pain from drug withdrawal and insomnia, and asked to be admitted for detoxification.
