Home
  • About IAVA
  • Take Action
  • Membership and Resources
  • IAVA in Washington
  • for Press and Bloggers
  • IAVA Blog
About IAVA

Blog post

     

del.icio.us del.icio.us Digg This! digg reddit reddit facebook facebook newsvine newsvine Post To MySpace!myspace reddittwitter

Senate Passes NDAA, Mental Health Provision
Posted by Patrick Campbell on October 22

If the President signing Advanced Appropriations into law today wasn’t enough, the Senate just passed the annual National Defense Authorization Act (68-29) sending to the President’s desk many of IAVA's legislative agenda recommendations. The NDAA includes one of our top priorities, mandatory mental health screenings, which have the potential to save more lives than all the MRAP’s money can buy. The NDAA will:

  • Require mandatory, face to face and confidential mental health screenings for every returning servicemember. (§ 708)
  • Increase the number of mental health providers in the military. (§ 521, 524, 714)
  • Limit servicemembers’ exposure to hazardous waste by severely limiting the use of open air burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan. (§ 317)
  • Extend retroactive stop loss payments to Reserve/National Guard. (§ 620)
  • Grant meaningful voting protections for overseas servicemembers. (§ 575-589)
  • Curtail DoD’s practice of punishing servicemembers for DoD’s own financial mistakes. (§ 661)

Every minute we wait to improve mental health care for troops has a human cost. We cannot afford to lose one more servicemember to suicide. It is critical we identify those most in need of mental health care early on and get these men and women the help they have earned. Mandatory mental health screenings have been a top priority for IAVA, and we applaud the hard work of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees and Senator Baucus for their leadership on this issue. Generations of veterans will benefit from this critical legislation.

Patrick Campbell, an Iraq veteran, serves as IAVA's Chief Legislative Counsel in Washington, D.C.

  Share:
del.icio.us del.icio.us Digg This! digg reddit reddit facebook facebook newsvine newsvine Post To MySpace!myspace reddittwitter

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

More information about formatting options

Join the IAVA

Join our growing movement. Sign up for your free membership today.

In This Section

  • Success Stories
  • Mission and History
  • Staff and Board
  • 2008 Annual Report
  • Jobs and Internships
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • IAVA Blog
    • In The News
    • Legislative Dispatches
    • Opinion
  • Contact Us

Success Stories

IAVA has helped thousands of veterans. Here are some of their stories:

Veterans Day 2009

On Veterans Day, IAVA Member Veterans participated in more than a dozen parades… 


IAVA, Ad Council Debut New PSA

On Veterans Day, IAVA and the Ad Council launched the second phase of a national… 


IAVA Spearheads Passage of Advanced Funding for VA Healthcare

On October 22nd, IAVA joined lawmakers and the nation's leading Veteran Service…