House Democrats Demand Answers From Trump’s VA on Vets Struggling to Access Mental Healthcare by Eric Umansky

House Democrats Demand Answers From Trump’s VA on Vets Struggling to Access Mental Healthcare The letter from lawmakers to Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins cites a recent ProPublica investigation that found hundreds of therapists have left the agency and vets often aren’t getting the help they need. https://www.propublica.org/article/democrats-veterans-affairs-doug-collins-letter-mental-health?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=majorinvestigations&utm_content=secondary More than 60 House Democrats are pressing Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins for answers about how the agency’s mental healthcare has been increasingly strained under President Donald Trump’s second administration. The lawmakers sent the secretary a letter on July 28 asking questions about the state of VA care, citing a ProPublica investigation from March that revealed the agency’s mental health workforce has been plummeting and veterans have been left in the lurch. While the VA has long had a shortfall of mental health providers, our reporting showed that the situation has gotten far worse under the current Trump administration. Hundreds of mental health staffers have left the VA and not been replaced. At the time, the VA declined our request for an interview and accused ProPublica of attempting to mislead the public by “cherry picking issues that are limited to a handful of sites and in many cases were worse under the Biden Administration.” In response to questions about the letter, a VA spokesperson said that the Trump administration “is solely focused on measuring VA’s success by how well it serves Veterans” and that the VA completed a record number of mental healthcare appointments in the past fiscal year while also lowering veterans’ wait times. The congressional letter gives the VA until Aug. 14 to respond. https://www.propublica.org/article/veterans-affairs-mental-health-therapists-quit-trump?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=majorinvestigations&utm_content=secondary