I think the VA is in the lead on treatment of PTSD. Are they doing as much as they could be? It's no secret that the VA is an overwhelmed system, and it's no secret to anybody that the VA can't handle it all.

Elspeth Cameron Ritchie

Categorized in : Top News

This seems like it was a very tough situation, in retrospect -- and this happens very commonly after a suicide -- you look back and you look back and you see all kinds of red flags or information that one person knew but another person didn't know, and if you put it all together, yes, maybe he should have been hospitalized.

Elspeth Cameron Ritchie

Again, in retrospect, perhaps we would have done things differently but his suicide attempts were back in '08 and '09. This was 2015. I don't know that the physician knew about the missing person report, and we weren't there at the time to see what actually happened. That's one of the challenges with looking at medical records afterward and why it's so important to do good documentation.

Elspeth Cameron Ritchie