Gillibrand Tours New Veterans Health Facility

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand was in Bay Shore Friday morning for a tour of North Shore-LIJ's Mildred and Frank Feinberg Division of the Unified Behavioral Center for Military Veterans and Their Families. 

The facility, which opened at 132 E. Main Street in 2012 in collaboration with the U.S Department of Veterans Affairs, offers behavioral health care to both veterans and their families in one location. 

"Thousands of New York veterans are returning home to their families suffering from physical and emotional traumas after being in battle," Gillibrand said, adding that on Long Island 750 new veterans suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Suicide rates among active duty service members rose by 77 percent from 2001 to 2012 and on Long Island, nine Iraq and Afghanistan veterans either died by suicide or an accidental drug/alcohol overdose during the last quarter of 2012, the senator said. 

"It is critical that we improve access to mental health and behavioral services for veterans and their families who support them," Gillibrand said. "Here at the Unified Behavioral Center for Military Veterans and Their Families, we see an incredibly effective and powerful tool that is making this possible. The collaboration between North Shore-LIJ and the Northport VA Medical Center is caring for our veterans and their families literally under one roof."

The Bay Shore facility marks the first time that the VA has collaborated with an outside non-profit health care system, said Gillibrand, who also urged the acting director of the Defense Department's Suicide Prevention Office to visit the center, which is currently caring for more than 50 patients since it started accepting patients in January. 

Andrew Roberts, the director of the Office of the Military and Veterans Liaison Services for North Shore-LIJ, knows full well of the struggles facing veterans when they return home from battle. 

"It was an excruciating experience," Roberts said of when he returned from serving in Iraq, noting he suffered from "sickening reactions" to unexpected noises and unsettling memories of war. 

"So many returning veterans are suffering from these psychological wounds and many are doing it kind of similar to the way that I did, at least initially–they are doing it in silence," Roberts said, "and there's a stigma against getting the care that is needed and we need to end this stigma. Lives are depending upon it."