VA Secretary Appoints Panel of National Suici...(tion; -- Colonel Charles W. Hoge M.D...),Health

-- Colonel Charles W. Hoge, M.D., director of the division of psychiatry

and behavior services at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research;

-- Colonel Robert Roy Ireland, M.D., program director for mental health

policy, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs;

-- Richard McKeon, Ph.D., special advisor for suicide prevention with the

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration; and

-- Jane Pearson, Ph.D., associate director for preventive interventions,

National Institute of Mental Health.

Appointees to the expert panel include:

-- Dr. Dan Blazer II, professor of psychology at Catholic University of

America;

-- Greg Brown, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania;

-- Martha Livingston Bruce, Ph.D., professor in clinical epidemiology and

health services research at Weill Medical College of Cornell University;

-- Dr. Eric D. Caine, chair of the department of psychiatry at the

University of Rochester;

-- Dr. Jan Fawcett, professor of psychiatry at the University of New Mexico

School of Medicine;

-- Robert D. Gibbons, director of the Center for Health Statistics,

University of Illinois at Chicago;

-- David Alan Jobes, Ph.D., professor of psychology at Catholic University

of America;

-- Mark S. Kaplan, Ph.D., from Portland State University. Member of the

Suicide Prevention Action Network-USA National Scientific Advisory

Council; and

-- Thomas R. Ten Have, director of the Biostatistics Analysis Center at the

University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.