BTM114 - Dr. Rajeev Ramchand - RAND and the Suicide Prevention and Response Independent Review Committee
Show Summary
On this episode of Behind the Mission, we feature a conversation with Dr. Rajeev Ramchand, Co-Director of the RAND Epstein Family Veterans Policy Research Institute and a member of the Department of Defense Suicide Prevention and Response Independent Review Committee.
About Today’s Guest
Rajeev Ramchand, Ph.D., is codirector of the RAND Epstein Family Veterans Policy Research Institute and a senior behavioral scientist at the RAND Corporation. He studies the prevalence, prevention, and treatment of mental health and substance use disorders in adolescents, service members and veterans, and minority populations. He has conducted research on suicide and suicide prevention including environmental scans of suicide prevention programs, epidemiologic studies on risk factors for suicide, qualitative research with suicide loss survivors, and evaluations of suicide prevention programs. He has also developed freely available tools to help organizations to evaluate their own suicide prevention programs. In 2022, he was appointed by the Secretary of Defense to serve as a member of the Department of Defense Suicide Prevention and Response Independent Review Committee. He has testified on suicide prevention before the United States Senate, House of Representatives, and California State Senate. He hold a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Chicago and a PhD in psychiatric epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
PsychArmor Resource of the Week
This week’s PsychArmor resource of the week is the the PsychArmor course Helping Others Hold On. Compared to the civilian population, suicide rates among the military and Veterans is very high. This series of lessons help to give tools and tips to recognize, understand, and combat suicidal feelings in Veterans. You can see find this course here: https://learn.psycharmor.org/courses/helping-others-hold-on.
Theme Music
Our theme music Don’t Kill the Messenger was written and performed by Navy Veteran Jerry Maniscalco, in cooperation with Operation Encore, a non profit committed to supporting singer/songwriter and musicians across the military and Veteran communities.
This Episode Sponsored By:
This episode is sponsored by PsychArmor, the premier education and learning ecosystem specializing in military culture content. PsychArmor offers an online e-learning laboratory with custom training options for organizations.
Producer and Host Duane France is a retired Army Noncommissioned Officer, combat veteran, and clinical mental health counselor for service members, veterans, and their families. You can find more about the work that he is doing at www.veteranmentalhealth.com
