Veterans in Central Washington are facing a mental health care crisis, says Heather Hill, a Licensed Mental Health Counselor who specializes in working with vets.
Hill is at the helm at Central Washington Veterans Counseling in Wenatchee. She and six subcontractors served 206 vets last year, but due to the Veterans Administration failure to extend their contract 98 of those vets stand to lose their mental health care as of Tuesday, July 1.
This comes in the midst of a national emergency regarding veteran suicide, Hill said, as vets take their own lives at 1.5 times the rate of civilians. It should also not be lost on anyone that over the last three years in this region we have seen veterans linked to three instances of violent crime, she said. Those include the shooting that saw a veteran named Alex White shot to death on the steps of a church the morning of the Apple Blossom Grand Parade in 2022. He was having a mental health crisis. In 2023, a veteran named Troy McMaster who was also having a mental health crisis shot up the Wenatchee VA Clinic. And most recently there were the tragic murders of the Decker girls, presumably at their hands of their father Travis Decker – a vet with mental health issues and PTSD.
I sat down with Hill this week to talk about what services CWVC provides to its patients, how the loss of this contact will impact vets in our region, and what folks can do about it if they want to take action.
We also compared the amount of funding Eastern Washington counties get from the VA, and I created this table with data provided by Hill.
You can watch our interview in the video above, and if you want to get in touch with decision makers in Olympia and DC here’s info on how to do that.
US Congresswoman Kim Schrier:
301 Yakima Street
Suite 329
Wenatchee, Washington 98801
Phone: (509) 850-5340
State Senator Keith Goehner:
415 Irv Newhouse Building
Olympia, WA 98504-0600
Mailing address: PO Box 40412 | Olympia, WA 98504-0412
Phone: (360) 786-7622
12th District Legislator Mike Steele:
425A Legislative Building
P.O. Box 40600
Olympia, WA 98504-0600
Toll Free: (800) 562-6000
Direct Line: (360) 786-7832
12th District Legislator Brian Burnett:
410 John L. O'Brien Building
P.O. Box 40600
Olympia, WA 98504-0600
Toll Free: (800) 562-6000
Direct Line: (360) 786-7954
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