MINUTES for 2025-02-26 FINAL - Laserfiche WebLink

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Chair M Dolittle: wondering how many homeless veterans in Hawaii county and how many make effort to locate services? There is an organization that takes a county annually. Not sure which organization takes the count. T Wojszynski: would be a good number to know to put some kind of boundary around the problem. Chair M Dolittle: Don't know if there is any tracking of suicides annually. Don't know if there is any way to quantify if there is a problem within Hawaii county for suicides with veterans. I Nahakuelua: agency does not have any information on that. Have a social worker colleague that works with veterans affairs in Hawaii county. Will try to get information on number of homeless veterans and correlation of suicides of veterans in Hawaii county. For suicidal ideology the leading argument is something called precipitating factors (childhood trauma, abandonment, neglect, abuse). A lot of people utilize substances, like drugs, to escape those thoughts and can't stop it and a lot of people just kill themselves. For veterans it's a two - ploy thing, they have their childhood traumas and then they have the trauma of leaving the U.S. Armed Services. U.S. Armed Services, for a lot of veterans is their family, if they had a good experience. U.S. Armed Services provides security, attention, food, shelter and a sense of purpose, when they leave that and return to the civilian world, they don't have that security and sense of purpose anymore and they just find routes to escape it. Chair M Dolittle: My question is always more about what's happening in our community and how can we address that. If we don't have any adequate information that gives us a clue, how do you address the problem. I Nahakuelua: That and if they want help. Was taught in order to help someone they first have to seek the help and have to accept that they phycological challenge. A lot of people don't want to seek help cause it forces them to process stuff they buried, trauma. D Lewis: it's a very complex issue, maybe can invite Hope Services or someone whose the lead on it to come to the next meeting. J Sze: going to school for psychology right now, plan it to work with veterans. In 2023 started a veterans club on campus. One of the issues is there is a wait time of over a year to be seen by the VA for mental health services, contributing factors to homelessness and addiction. For the past year, been working with non-profit (sustainable Healing Hawaii) that is trying to bridge gap between the VA and veterans (not getting medications on time, not being able to see mental health professionals, being put on a waitlist for homelessness). Want to set up peer -to -peer support group on this island. Representatives from VA will be coming here March 10-14 (2025) and will train group on peer -to -peer support, then will go district to district on Big Island holding meetings to hear issues veterans are facing and try to