VA Mental Health Care and Suicide Prevention Recognition

Industry Recognizes VA Campaigns for Raising Public Awareness for Veterans Mental Health Care

WASHINGTON – September 19, 2012 - Two U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs public awareness campaigns designed to help Veterans who seek mental health care assistance have received forty-three industry and association awards for communication and design excellence.

“We are pleased that these campaigns have been recognized for creative and design excellence,” said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki. “More importantly, they have been effective in helping us address two of our highest priorities – mental health care and suicide prevention.”

The Veterans Crisis Line and Make the Connection campaigns strive to reach Veterans and their families and friends wherever they are. Using state-of-the-art online and communications tools, the campaigns have increased awareness of critical VA resources available to Veterans and their families and friends dealing with crises or other mental health challenges.

The Veterans Crisis Line has released three PSAs that collectively earned 570 million television impressions since March 2011. The last two PSAs have consistently ranked in the top five percent of PSAs tracked by Nielsen. Additionally, through its suicide prevention outreach plan, VA is creating a network of collaborating partners to spread the word, strategically placing advertising, rebranding the website, and developing new collateral materials. More than 650,000 callers have called the crisis line and over 440,000 of these callers have identified themselves as Veterans or family members or friends of Veterans. There have been over 23,000 rescues of actively suicidal Veterans to date. read more>>>