Statement calling for Veteran suicide prevention

Nov 11, 2025

CMHA Alberta and Centre for Suicide Prevention, together with CMHA National, recently appeared to testify as witnesses to the House Standing Committee on Veterans’ Affairs study on suicide prevention among Veterans.

Suicide among Veterans continues to occur at an alarming rate. Male military Veterans are 1.5 times more likely to die by suicide than their civilian counterparts, and female Veterans are almost twice as likely.¹ The period of transition from military to civilian life represents a particularly vulnerable time for many Veterans, particularly male Veterans, who can encounter loss of status, community, identity, and structure during this process.

We commend federal efforts to prevent suicide, including the Canadian Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Canada’s Joint Suicide Prevention Strategy and the Public Health Agency of Canada’s Federal Framework and National Suicide Prevention Action Plan, particularly the implementation of 9-8-8: the Suicide Crisis Helpline.

However, more efforts are needed, and CMHA Alberta and Centre for Suicide Prevention, along with CMHA National, call on the federal government to develop a National Suicide Prevention Strategy that encompasses early intervention, crisis prevention, and community-based response services. A national strategy would help prevent suicide among all Canadians and better support priority populations, including Veterans.

“We’re hearing that there are still gaps and deficits that still need to be addressed [in Veteran suicide prevention]. The CAF/VAC strategy would benefit from a national strategy which would bolster this priority or else augment it with other actions for Veterans within the strategy,” said Robert Olson, Research Librarian with CMHA Alberta and Centre for Suicide Prevention.

Key elements of a national strategy should include:

Federal coordination with cooperation and collaboration at the federal-provincial-territorial table.
Cross-sectoral collaboration across all levels of government and federal departments whose remits are relevant to suicide and its prevention— including health, Veterans’ affairs, public safety, Indigenous services, justice, social services, and housing— to ensure coherence in development, implementation, and evaluation.²
Meaningful engagement with people with lived experience (including Veterans and their families), frontline and crisis workers, and mental health providers who are best placed to identify priorities, challenges, and service gaps.
Commitment to research and evidence, examining both domestic and international models of effective public health and mental health promotion interventions.
Evaluation frameworks with clear deliverables and outcome targets, accompanied by regular, transparent public reporting.
Flexible, dedicated funding that allows provinces and territories to tailor implementation and health service delivery to their regional priorities and capacities and states of readiness.
Targeted approaches designed around different priority populations’ unique precipitating factors for suicide, including peer support, strengthening access to timely, coordinated care, training health care providers to be culturally competent, and enhancing supports in the period of transition from military to civilian life (and beyond).

Comprehensive, targeted and sustained mental health supports for Veterans and their families are crucial: the burden of suicide in this population is at crisis levels. National strategies are proven to reduce stigma, increase awareness, and address the broader social determinants of health such as housing, employment, and homelessness. These factors are especially relevant for Veterans but are currently not being considered in any coordinated way.

A national strategy would complement and strengthen existing CAF/VAC efforts by addressing systemic gaps, ensuring that all Veterans— regardless of service class or care pathway— receive timely, coordinated support.

Resources

Sources

¹ Van Til, L., Kopp, A. & Heber, A. (2022). 2021 Veteran Suicide Mortality Study; Follow-up period from 1975 to 2016. https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2022/aca-vac/V3-1-9-2022-eng.pdf

² Schlichthorst, M., et al. (2022). Evaluating the effectiveness of components of national suicide prevention strategies. Crisis. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36537610