By DRUW GIAMALVA The Reporter

A $248,803 grant has been given to the Vets4Vets foundation by the Alabama Department of Veteran Affairs. 

This grant will able to give more support and help to the veterans of North Alabama, as Alabama is ranked as having the second highest veteran suicide rate in the country. The Vets4Vets foundation plans to use the grant to invest in saving the lives of the state of Alabama’s veterans and family members from the clutch of suicidal intent. 

Dr. Mick Sizemore, the executive director of the Vets4Vets foundation, explains that the mission for the Vets4Vets foundation is to help make the quality of life better for anyone who needs the help, as the statistics say that a veteran takes their life every 51 minutes.  

“Our mission is to try to bring that circle of life together and bring quality of life for our veterans and their family members. We say that no one is left behind, and we are saving lives and saving family members. That is what we are about. Not only do we work with veterans, but we also work with first responders, firemen, law enforcement and EMTs. We have helped them get into treatment. We intervened with people who were suicidal. We are just not solely on veterans, as we help anyone who needs the help. We are not going to turn anyone away,” Sizemore said. 

Sizemore explained to the crowd about the difference in prevention and intervention of helping someone with suicidal thoughts or intent. 

“I want to make it clear to everyone that there is a difference between prevention and intervention. Prevention in something we do takes months, weeks or days out before someone has suicidal intent. That is the main thing for us. About90% of what we do involves prevention. That’s what we want to be. Intervention is when we actively intervene with someone who has suicidal intent. Most of our staff is training in that, but we never want to get to that,” Sizemore said. 

“Over half of our veterans that died by suicide were from rural counties. We specifically concentrate on rural counties. We stay out of those urban areas. We don’t go into Huntsville, even though we use services in Huntsville. We do help them, but we strategically stay out of there because we would be overwhelmed in that perspective.”

Sizemore believes that mental health is a massive factor in suicidal intent, as 90% of people who have ended their life have ended up having a mental health condition or background.  

“This statistic, now I don’t know how they came up with this stat, but 90% of those who ended their lives by suicide had a mental health condition or a mental health background. That 90% is why we focus on the mental health aspect. If I had favorite statistic, if there is one about this topic, but 274 Americans wake up with suicidal intent, but only one takes their life. That is telling us something, as either somebody or something intervened in that and that gives us hope. There is hope that we can look at and these preventive techniques we use in those programs could be focused on helping that one person,” Sizemore said. 

The Vets4Vets foundation uses a three-pronged approach that involves public education on how to actively intervene, mental health prevention and active intervention techniques.

“We have a three-pronged approach, with the first being public education. We try to teach our program that we feel will most likely come in contact with veterans in crisis. What happens in that respect is we have taught now 82 since 2022 in the community. We are looking at first responders, veteran leaders, and DHR. We work in the DHR system because those are family problems and veterans can get caught up in that. We want to teach these techniques of active intervention to people most likely to come into contact,” Sizemore continued.

“Our second-pronged approach is the prevention programs and if we have to use intervention strategies. Its applied suicide intervention strategies training. This is an international training that has been around for 40 years. It’s evidenced based and it’s the gold standard. That’s what we use to teach. It’s a three-day workshop and it is certifiable. That’s what law enforcement and first responders like about it, because it removes the liability if they use it correctly, the liability is removed. It costs us roughly about $500 per participant because we have to purchase materials and we have a certain agreement with living works, who produces this, that we have to do certain things. If we do a full class, we are looking at $12,500 that it would cost us. If we have to hire another instructor, that is another $3,000.” 

Kent Davis, the Alabama Department of Veteran Affairs Commissioner, believes there is a big problem for the services provided for veterans who are in need of help. 

“We have a real problem in Alabama for services for veterans. You add that up with all of the horrific statistics that we face, and this system just can’t keep up with it right now. We pushed really hard to get a VA center in Huntsville a few years ago and it was very close to going through congress, but that bill got killed due to political fighting,” Davis said. 

“Our mission of the Alabama Department of Veteran Affairs exists to assist our veterans in the state. Our growth in history has been to spread awareness, not only of benefits and services, but also of the mental health crisis among veterans in Alabama. We have tried to do a lot to spread awareness for this crisis.” 

Davis explains how half of the Alabama population is connected to some kind of military service and also explains how the department and budget works.  

“My proudest statistic is that we have around 400,000 military veterans in the state of Alabama. That is about 8% of the population of Alabama. When you add up active-duty military, guardsman, reserves and family members, you are talking about half of the state of Alabama’s population that have direct connection to military service. I am always transparent that we have a big budget. Half of our budget comes from the federal government and half of what the state offers. We are kinda ran like a corporation. We are seen by a board of directors, a 17-member state board veterans affair. Those 17 board members are made up of representatives by law of the large veteran service organization in the state, so it gives us a direct accountability to those veterans in the state of Alabama. They do hold me and that department, as they should.”

For more information about the Vets4Vets foundation, visit https://vets4vetsfoundation.org/