Moulton Teams Up with Suicide Prevention and Mental Health Advocate for State of the Union
WASHINGTON — Tomorrow, Representative Seth Moulton (D-MA) will team up with Kim Burditt, his guest for the State of the Union, to urge Congress to pass policies that help prevent suicide and break the stigma around seeking mental healthcare. Burditt is the Senior Manager of Programs & Logistics for Suicide Prevention & Postvention at Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors. TAPS is a national nonprofit that supports all those grieving the loss of a loved one whose life included American military service.
Since it was founded in 1994, TAPS has built and expanded a national peer support network that has offered free support to more than 90,000 survivors of military loss.
“Suicide is hard to talk about, which is why Kim’s story is so amazing—after facing unimaginable tragedy, she’s sharing her experience to help save lives. I know how much it means to be able to talk to someone who understands what you’re going through, and Kim does that for fellow Americans every day,” Moulton said.
Burditt, who lives in Wakefield, knows first-hand the trauma and emotional pain that accompanies the suicide death of a loved one. She lost her only sibling, Marine veteran Jon Hoffman, to suicide in 2010. She has made it her career to care for suicide loss survivors and prevent suicide.
“It is an honor to walk alongside and support those who grieve the suicide death of a loved one,” Burditt said. “In my work at TAPS, I have the unique opportunity to support survivors through the use of our Suicide Postvention Model, which allows us to stabilize suicide-specific issues after loss, provide companionship to these survivors during the difficult work of grief, and then guide them on a pathway toward healing and post-traumatic growth.”
Over the last decade, TAPS has supported more than 14,000 survivors of military suicide loss. In Burditt’s role as senior manager, she is responsible for organizing events, retreats, and trainings for those survivors, including the annual TAPS National Military Suicide Survivor Seminar.
Prior to joining TAPS, Kim organized adult suicide prevention trainings around the state of Massachusetts with a local suicide pre- and postvention agency. She is the proud spouse of a 100% Post-Traumatic Stress-disabled veteran and currently pursuing a master’s degree in social work from Salem State University.
Over the summer, Moulton disclosed publicly for the first time that he was managing Post-Traumatic Stress from his experiences in Iraq, where he served four tours of duty as a Marine. He decided to tell his story to help break the stigma that prevents people from getting help with mental health issues. In the months since, he’s introduced plans to make getting mental health checkups a routine part of life. In December, the defense bill signed into law included a plan Moulton wrote to require every member of the Armed Forces to receive a mental health checkup within 21 days of returning home from a deployment.
Moulton also introduced The National Suicide Hotline Designation Act with fellow veteran Rep. Chris Stewart (R-UT) and Senators Cory Gardner (R-CO) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI). The bill would designate 9-8-8 as the national hotline anyone in America could call when they’re experiencing a mental health emergency or have a mental health concern but don’t know how to access help.
Moulton has worked to use mental health policy as an area where members of both parties can find common ground. The National Suicide Hotline Designation Act currently has 133 bipartisan cosponsors in the House of Representatives. In December, the Senate version of the bill passed unanimously through the Republican-controlled Senate Commerce Committee. Also in December, the FCC unanimously voted to move forward with a rulemaking process to formally designate 988 as the national lifeline.
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