PTSD Awareness Month arrives with roughly 321,000 Maryland veterans, documented gaps in rural mental health access, and no new state initiative to address either.
By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
June is PTSD Awareness Month. It arrives in Maryland alongside Men’s Health Month and Men’s Mental Health Month — a convergence that should, in a state with one of the largest veteran populations on the East Coast, produce at least some visible response from Annapolis.
It hasn’t.
The Moore administration has no new PTSD initiative, no veteran-specific mental health program launched in 2025 or 2026, and nothing from the legislative session that concluded in April that addresses post-traumatic stress disorder by name. The Maryland Department of Veterans and Military Families — which got a new secretary in August 2025 when Governor Moore appointed retired Army Colonel Ed Rothstein — is focused on housing and a second veterans home in Sykesville. Both are legitimate priorities. Neither is mental health.
Meanwhile, the data on what’s not being addressed accumulates quietly.
The numbers Maryland is not talking about
Maryland has approximately 321,000 veterans as of 2025, according to VA population projections — roughly 268,000 men and 53,000 women. That population is declining as Vietnam-era veterans age, but it remains substantial, and it is concentrated in counties with the worst mental health access in the state.
Nationally, the veteran suicide rate in 2022 was 34.7 per 100,000 — more than double the rate for non-veteran adults, which stood at 17.1 per 100,000, according to the VA’s 2024 National Veteran Suicide Prevention Annual Report. Veterans account for roughly 7 percent of the U.S. adult population but approximately 13 to 14 percent of all suicide deaths. The 2025 report, covering 2023 data, found that age-adjusted suicide rates increased by 3.1 percent for male veterans from 2022 to 2023, even as the rate for male non-veteran adults declined by 2.3 percent — a gap that is widening, not closing.
Maryland veterans die by suicide at a rate of 15.4 per 100,000 — lower than the national veteran average of 34.7, according to the VA’s Maryland state data sheet, but higher than the Maryland general population rate of 12.0. The statewide figure masks sharp geographic disparities: in Western Maryland and the Eastern Shore, where VA access is worst, general-population suicide rates are the highest in the state. The access infrastructure that helps explain Maryland’s relatively favorable statewide number — proximity to major VA facilities in the DC and Baltimore corridors, higher insurance coverage rates, urban density — does not extend to the counties where veterans are most isolated and most at risk.
PTSD is the condition most directly linked to veteran suicide risk. Veterans diagnosed with PTSD face a suicide rate of 51.3 per 100,000 — nearly double that of veterans without the diagnosis. Treatment works when accessed: VA data shows that from 2001 to 2022, suicide rates fell 31.6 percent among veterans in VHA care with a PTSD diagnosis. The problem is the gap between veterans who need that care and those who actually receive it. Fewer than half of all U.S. veterans are enrolled in VA care. Community-based and state-level services exist to bridge that gap. In Maryland, those services are unevenly distributed in ways the state has documented but not resolved.
The geography of the gap
Western Maryland is the problem that keeps appearing in the data. Garrett, Allegany, and Washington counties have the highest suicide rates in the state for the general population, according to the Maryland Suicide Fatality Review Committee. They are also the counties where behavioral health access is most constrained.
The Maryland Health Care Commission’s 2024 workforce report found that nearly every Maryland county falls short of behavioral health provider supply — every county except two is designated as a partial or countywide shortage area. Southern and Western Maryland face the most pronounced gaps.
Western Maryland veterans seeking VA care are routed to the Martinsburg VA Medical Center across the border in West Virginia. Eastern Shore veterans route to the VA Maryland Health Care System in Baltimore or Perry Point — in some cases, an hour-and-a-half drive each way. The state’s “Maryland’s Commitment to Veterans” program provides referral services and connection to treatment providers and is available 24 hours a day. Referral services are not the same as treatment capacity.
A Veterans Treatment Court was established in Washington and Frederick counties only in November 2024 — a belated step toward addressing justice-involved veterans with PTSD and substance use disorders. Montgomery County, with more than 36,000 veterans, still does not have one as of the most recent available information, though its Commission on Veterans Affairs recommended one in its 2025 annual report.
What Moore has and hasn’t done
To be precise about what exists: Maryland’s Commitment to Veterans is a functioning program with a 24-hour helpline and referral infrastructure. The state funds a behavioral health services matching grant program — the Sheila E. Hixson Behavioral Health Services Matching Grant — for nonprofits serving veterans. The VA Maryland Health Care System offers PTSD care, military sexual trauma care, and mental health services at its Baltimore and Perry Point facilities.
These are real. They predate the Moore administration and have not been significantly expanded under it.
What has happened under Moore: Anthony Woods, Moore’s first Veterans secretary and an Army veteran himself, resigned in May 2025. Rothstein was appointed in July and took office in August, inheriting a department that had just gone through a leadership transition and had no announced mental health initiative on its agenda. In the 2026 legislative session — Moore’s third — nothing specific to veteran PTSD, veteran mental health access, or behavioral health workforce expansion for veteran-serving providers was passed.
The administration’s $1.4 billion in mental health spending is statewide, not veteran-targeted, and the youth mental health consortium that is its signature investment does not address the veteran population at all.
The federal context
At the federal level, the VA’s 2025 budget allocated $17 billion to mental health services and $583 million specifically to suicide prevention outreach — numbers that dwarf anything a state can match and that reflect the scale of the problem. But federal funding does not solve the state-level access and coordination gaps that determine whether a veteran in Garrett County or Queen Anne’s County can actually reach a provider.
The awareness calendar makes the absence more visible. June carries PTSD Awareness Month, Men’s Health Month, and Men’s Mental Health Month simultaneously — a convergence of designations that, taken together, describe a large share of Maryland’s most at-risk veteran population. The Moore administration has acknowledged male mental health as a priority. It made veterans a stated focus in 2024. Neither acknowledgment has produced a funded, clinical, veteran-specific mental health program.
That is the gap PTSD Awareness Month exists to close. In Maryland, it hasn’t moved.
Sources: Maryland veteran population estimates (approximately 321,000 total; 267,924 male, 53,119 female as of September 2025) are from the VA’s VetPop2020 projections, published by the Department of Veterans Affairs. National veteran suicide rate (34.7 per 100,000 in 2022) and non-veteran comparison (17.1 per 100,000) are from the VA’s 2024 National Veteran Suicide Prevention Annual Report. Maryland veteran suicide rate (15.4 per 100,000 in 2022) and method data are from the VA Maryland Veteran Suicide Data Sheet, 2022 edition, published November 2024. The 2025 National Veteran Suicide Prevention Annual Report figures — including the 3.1 percent increase in male veteran suicide rates from 2022 to 2023 versus a 2.3 percent decline for male non-veterans — are from the VA’s 2025 Annual Report. The PTSD suicide rate (51.3 per 100,000 for veterans with PTSD) and the 31.6 percent long-term reduction for veterans in VHA PTSD care are from the Mission Roll Call/VA summary and the VA 2024 Annual Report respectively. The statistic that fewer than half of veterans are enrolled in VA care is from Mission Roll Call’s 2024 veterans mental health analysis. The Maryland behavioral health workforce shortage — nearly every county designated as a partial or countywide shortage area, with a 50 percent workforce growth needed — is from The Daily Record’s May 2026 reporting on the Maryland Health Care Commission’s 2024 workforce report. The Western Maryland VA routing information is from the Maryland Department of Veterans and Military Families’ VA Healthcare Enrollment page. The November 2024 Veterans Treatment Court in Washington and Frederick counties, and the Montgomery County veterans population figure (36,000-plus), are from the Montgomery County Commission on Veterans Affairs 2025 Annual Report. Maryland’s Commitment to Veterans program details and the Sheila E. Hixson Behavioral Health Services Matching Grant are from the official Army Benefits website’s Maryland state summary and the Maryland DVMF. Ed Rothstein’s appointment, background, and stated priorities are from his Wikipedia entry and the Baltimore Banner interview cited therein.
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