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This study evaluates the effectiveness of the Veterans Crisis Line on immediate call outcomes (i.e., caller distress, suicidal ideation, and suicidal urgency) for veterans who provide identifying information.Coders rated pre- and post-distress, suicidal ideation, and suicidal urgency for 647 calls from 2019 veteran callers. Intraclass correlation coefficients examined inter-rater reliability. Multilevel generalized linear modeling examined pre-post changes.Inter-rater reliability was good for distress, excellent for suicidal ideation, and fair for urgency. Callers had 5 times greater odds of a reduction in distress (AOR=5.03, 95% CI=3.98, 6.49), almost 5 times greater odds of a reduction in suicidal ideation (AOR=4.92, 95% CI=3.49, 6.94), and 11 times greater odds of a reduction in suicidal urgency (AOR=11.01, 95% CI=2.72, 44.50) at the end of calls than at the beginning.Veterans Crisis Line callers who provide identifying information experience reductions in distress and suicidal ideation during the call. Research is needed to examine the reduction in suicidal urgency because of fair reliability, generalizability of results to other callers, post-call treatment contact and engagement, and risk for suicide attempts and death.

Background For over a decade, there has been a surge in opioid-related morbidity and mortality among Veterans. To better understand the impact of the growing epidemic, it is important to identify the cause-specific mortality rates among Veterans with a prior nonfatal opioid overdose. Methods We followed 8370 Veterans who received medical care for a nonfatal opioid overdose between 2011 through 2015.Mortality records were linked to clinical records from the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). We compared the mortality rates among those with a nonfatal opioid overdose to a 5 % stratified random sample of patients accessing services during the same time period. SMRs were calculated using age-adjusted cause-specific mortality rates for the l U.S. population obtained from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Wide-Ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research (CDC WONDER). Results The crude mortality for Veterans with a history of a nonfatal overdose was 370.6 per 10,000 person years. Those with a prior nonfatal overdose had a higher risk of substance-related mortality (aHR [adjusted Hazard Ratio] 5.0), including a higher risk of death from drugs (aHR 6.9) and alcohol (aHR 2.7). Similarly, cause-specific mortalities assessed between Veterans and the U.S. population, SMRs were also highest for deaths associated with substances (114.0). Conclusion Veterans with a prior nonfatal overdose experienced substantially higher mortality rates compared to other Veterans or the general U.S. population. Causes of death related to substance use and mental health were significantly higher than other causes of death, highlighting the importance of integrated treatment and substance use services.