{"id":29489,"date":"2023-09-28T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-28T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=29489"},"modified":"2023-09-30T06:42:26","modified_gmt":"2023-09-30T06:42:26","slug":"ny-national-guard-medical-experts-focus-on-suicide-soldier-care-at-behavioral-healthworkshop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=29489","title":{"rendered":"NY National Guard medical experts focus on suicide, Soldier care at behavioral healthworkshop"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n New York Army National Guard medical providers and civilian peers attend a behavioral health training workshop to improve suicide prevention and response at the Stratton Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Albany, N.Y., Sept. 21, 2023. Medical professionals from across the New York Army National Guard participated in the annual Medical Detachment training over a three-day period. (U.S. Army National Guard photo by Staff Sgt. Andrew Valenza)
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\n New York Army National Guard Maj. Gen. Ray Shields, the adjutant general, speaks with medical providers and civilian peers during the New York Army National Guard\u2019s behavioral health training workshop to improve suicide prevention and response at the Stratton Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Albany, N.Y., Sept. 21, 2023. Medical professionals from across the New York Army National Guard participated in the annual Medical Detachment training over a three-day period. (U.S. Army National Guard photo by Staff Sgt. Andrew Valenza)
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\n Army Maj. Gen. Jill Faris, Director of the Office of the Joint Surgeon for the National Guard Bureau, speaks with medical providers and civilian peers during the New York Army National Guard\u2019s behavioral health training workshop to improve suicide prevention and response at the Stratton Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Albany, N.Y., Sept. 21, 2023. Medical professionals from across the New York Army National Guard participated in the annual Medical Detachment training over a three-day period. (U.S. Army National Guard photo by Staff Sgt. Andrew Valenza)
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The New York Army Guard\u2019s medical professionals talked Soldier care and suicide prevention during a Sept. 21-23 conference at the Stratton Veterans Administration Medical Center in Albany.<\/p>\n

\u201cLeaders are coming together with Soldiers just to talk about access to care, life circumstances, anything that might be off track for a Soldier where peers can help, where leadership can help and where we can bring support to bear,\u201d said Col. William LeCates, the New York National Guard State Surgeon.<\/p>\n

New York Army National Guard medical professionals came together to improve their clinical skills during the Medical Detachment training.<\/p>\n

September is recognized as National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, so the topics focused on those behavioral health issues.<\/p>\n

The workshop brought together a wide range of medical professionals and learn and discuss with each other ways to improve their interactions with Soldiers, especially those in distress, said Capt. Samuel Chubb, the State Surgeon\u2019s Office operations officer and event organizer.<\/p>\n

There are limited opportunities for them to come together in this way, Chubb said, and the biggest takeaway participants told him they received at the event was a better understanding of available resources.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that one of the things that we struggle with as an organization is that we don’t necessarily always understand from top to bottom, how the process works and who you need to call in specific situations,\u201d Chubb said.<\/p>\n

New York\u2019s adjutant general, Maj. Gen. Ray Shields, spoke with the providers about sexual assault and suicide prevention and stressed the importance of encouraging Soldiers to speak up.<\/p>\n

When dealing with mental health issues, it is okay to seek help, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is a message to carry forward to the field, he told the Medical Command health care specialists.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you are if you are depressed, if you are thinking about suicide, that is not a weakness,\u201d Shields said. \u201cIf you had a broken leg, you would go to the doctor, right?\u201d Shields asked rhetorically.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, what is the difference? If you are having an issue with mental health, there is no difference. There is no difference, and we don’t see it as any different,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The event offered instruction for both National Guard and VA medical providers.<\/p>\n

The workshop also included remarks from Army Maj. Gen. Jill Faris, Director of the Office of the Joint Surgeon for the National Guard Bureau.<\/p>\n

LeCates said there are resources across the state for Soldiers that need help with mental health issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to connect people in need to those resources,\u201d LeCates said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBringing them together is really one of the key challenges. And so, at the unit, at the very smallest gathering level, we want people to talk about behavior, health, we want to talk about wellness, and we want to bring people together with the resources,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

National Guard Soldiers are a special case, said Leah MacDonald, a social worker at the VA, because they are more spread out than active-duty Soldiers who are often stationed together on one post.<\/p>\n

And with state activations for emergency response efforts, MacDonald said, they are activated more frequently now than ever before.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are partnering anywhere and everywhere that will allow us to get out information about suicide prevention and training to ensure that folks know what to do,\u201d MacDonald said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not just specific to mental health providers, but just the general person dealing with someone who may have someone in their lives that is struggling with mental health concerns, or if they themselves are struggling with mental health concerns,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1 \/ 3 Show Caption + Hide Caption \u2013 New York Army National Guard medical providers and civilian peers attend a behavioral health training workshop to improve suicide prevention and response at the Stratton Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Albany, N.Y., Sept. 21, 2023. Medical professionals from across the New York Army National Guard participated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29491,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29489"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29495,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29489\/revisions\/29495"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}