Summary

Requires the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to arrange, within 90 days, for the National Academies to conduct an independent review of deaths by suicide among covered veterans during the five years before enactment. The review must quantify suicides and related violent/accidental deaths, list demographics, compile toxicology-annotated medication and substance histories (including black box warnings, off‑label use, and psychotropic drugs), and document diagnoses and concurrent prescribing patterns for PTSD, TBI, military sexual trauma, and anxiety/depressive disorders. The Department of Veterans Affairs must also collect and report measures on medication use, use of non‑medication first‑line treatments, how clinical practice guidelines are developed and updated, and how routine pain scoring relates to concurrent prescribing.

• VA must seek the National Academies to perform an independent review of veteran suicides in the five years prior to enactment, within 90 days.
• The review must quantify suicides and related violent/accidental deaths and list demographic details for each decedent.
• Toxicology findings and full medication/substance histories must be annotated with black box warnings, off‑label use, and psychotropic status.
• The review must link prescriptions to the VA or VA‑contract diagnoses that prompted them (PTSD, TBI, military sexual trauma, anxiety/depression).
• Counts of concurrent prescriptions (polypharmacy) for mental health and related conditions must be included.
• VA must track and report counts of veterans on no VA medications and compare use of non‑medication first‑line therapies versus medication‑only care.
• The Department must report when non‑medication treatments were tried and later followed by medications of interest.
• VA must explain how it develops and updates clinical practice guidelines that affect prescribing.
• The bill requires analysis of routine pain scoring practices and their relationship to concurrent prescribing of multiple medications.
• The measure mandates study and reporting; it does not itself change clinical practice rules or explicitly authorize funding in the text provided.