Don't suffer in silence

Getting mental health support

If you are hurting right now, the number below works right now. You do not have to earn it, qualify for it, or prove anything first.

Veterans Crisis Line — dial 988, then press 1. Text 838255. Chat at veteranscrisisline.net. TTY 711 then 988, or 1-800-799-4889. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You do not have to be enrolled in VA benefits or health care to connect.

Put that number in your phone before you need it. Put it in the phone of one other person too — your spouse, your battle buddy, whoever would be the one to call on your behalf. I have watched people go looking for it in the worst hour of their life. Do not be one of them.

Read this first

You do not need a rating

This is the single thing that stops people from ever asking.

A service-connected rating is not what qualifies you for VA health care. Being enrolled is. A veteran with a 0% rating, or no rating at all, can be enrolled and can be treated.

Nobody has to agree that your problem started in the service before you are allowed to get help for it. If you have been sitting out because you figured you did not rate it — you were told wrong.

★ No rating required. Ask anyway.

If you are not enrolled

Enrollment is the gate. Get through it.

Enrollment is what opens VA care. If you are not enrolled, that is the first move.

Apply with VA Form 10-10EZ
You can apply online, by mail, by phone, or in person at a VA facility
Start at va.gov/health-care/how-to-apply

It costs nothing to apply and nothing to ask. There is no fee and no percentage of anything — not to me, not to anybody.

★ One form. Do it today.

Who to ask

Real people, real offices

Say what you need out loud, to somebody whose job it is.

Your VA facility — find yours at va.gov/find-locations. Every facility has an enrollment and eligibility office.
The Patient Advocate at your facility — that is a real position, in every VA medical center, and their job is to unstick you when the system will not move.
An accredited Veterans Service Organization representative. Accredited means VA recognizes them to act on your behalf. Their help is free.

If the first person you talk to cannot help you, ask for the next one by name. That is not being difficult. That is how it works.

★ Ask a person, not a website.

Care outside VA

Community care has to be authorized first

VA can send you to a provider in your own town. The order has to come through VA.

Do not arrange outside care on your own and assume VA will pay you back. VA has to authorize the care before you go. Veterans get stuck with bills they never should have carried because nobody told them this.

Ask your VA care team directly whether community care applies to you, and get the authorization in hand before the first appointment.

★ Authorization first. Then the appointment.

If VA says no

No is not the end of it

A health care decision you disagree with can be appealed. Here is that path.

Contact your facility's Patient Advocate
Submit a written appeal stating the decision, why you disagree, and your supporting medical evidence
You get a Notice of Receipt of Clinical Appeal
The facility chief medical officer reviews it
Still disagree? Request a second-level review from the VISN office — the regional network over your facility

VA states no deadline for this. Its own instruction is to file as soon as you can — so do not sit on it. Details at va.gov/decision-reviews/clinical-appeals.

★ You have the right to push back.

For the Family

If you are reading this for somebody else

Spouses, parents, caregivers, survivors — this page is for you too.

The Crisis Line takes calls from Family members and friends worried about a veteran. You do not have to be the veteran to call it.
You can help them apply with the 10-10EZ. You can sit with them while they call.
You can ask for the Patient Advocate by name on their behalf.

A Soldier will do for his Family what he will not do for himself. Use that.

★ Making the call for him counts.

Why I put this page in the binder. I spent two years in the transition office at Fort Riley watching good people walk out the door with no idea what they had earned. The ones who never asked were almost never the ones who did not qualify. They were the ones who assumed they did not. I bring the truth, simple and to the point. I have nothing left in this world than my word.