Reaching Out

The VA helps Vietvets

In Birmingham, Don Reed and three aides got six phone calls in two weeks about Viet Nam War veterans who threatened to kill themselves. Each time Reed and his team raced to answer the cries for help. One vet waved a knife and swore that he would slice up his dog and then himself. "Cut up the damn dog," said Reed with a calm that he did not feel. "I don't care." Suddenly, when the vet was distracted, Reed kicked him in the shins and disarmed him. Reed & Co. saved five of the vets, but they were too late on one call. Depressed, the man had already cut veins in his arms and died.

Reed and his team are part of the Veterans Administration's new Operation Outreach. Started on Oct. 1, the program now has teams working out of about 40 storefronts and operating on a first-year budget of $9.9 million. By next year the service is scheduled to expand to 86 teams capable of reaching some 100,000 Viet Nam vets at an annual cost of $13.9 million. The VA got the idea from a similar counseling service provided through 65 centers by the private Disabled American Veterans Organization.

Top VA officials candidly admit that Operation Outreach is needed because the VA's normal facilities have failed to help enough of the roughly 500,000 veterans who suffer from what Government psychologists call "P.V.S."--Post-Viet Nam Syndrome. "We find a lot of the guys have turned off society and turned off the VA," concedes VA Administrator Max Cleland, who lost two legs and an arm in Viet Nam. He recalls his own struggle with P.V.S. all too well: "It was like a series of secondary explosions going off in my head. I was on an emotional rollercoaster, and I didn't know where I was going." Added Don Crawford, a VA psychologist who directs Operation Outreach: "A lot of these veterans don't trust the Government. They feel it screwed them over. They won't even go into a Government building."

But Crawford has discovered that depressed or distraught vets can be coaxed into visiting the informal storefront offices of Operation Outreach. The offices, moreover, are generally manned by Viet Nam vets who have suffered similar emotional maladies. These counselors go through a weeklong training session designed to rid them of their own postwar hang-ups. They also learn how to tell when a vet needs professional psychiatric help rather than some friendly counseling.

The chance to bend a responsive ear has helped to ease the lingering postcombat trauma of many veterans. Said Cleland: "Some guys are absolutely paralyzed by P.V.S. They have to have a compassionate environment to let themselves go." -

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