VA Western Colorado Chaplain Care Reaches Past the Chapel

On January 17, 2025, Chaplain Rachel Mikaelson went on Grand Junction television to explain chaplain services at VA Western Colorado. She described trained specialists in spiritual and religious care, an interfaith chapel, and a path for veterans and families to ask for help.

That clip sold a door on campus. The load-bearing fact sits in VA’s own 2023 counts: Colorado veterans died by suicide at 48.4 per 100,000, against a national veteran rate of 35.2. Most of those deaths never crossed a chapel threshold at all.

A Television Segment Sold Chapel Hours

Mikaelson’s midday appearance was a local how-to. Chaplains, she said, are trained specialists, not volunteer greeters, and they treat veterans and their families. The facility keeps an interfaith chapel meant to serve people from different religious backgrounds, not a single Sunday crowd.

VA Western Colorado publishes that offer on the system’s chaplain services page, which is the same route the television segment pointed viewers toward. Anyone who wants the office can also call their local VA health care facility and ask for chaplain care.

A chapel hour is easy to film. The people the office still has to reach live on ranches, in small mountain towns, and in households that have not enrolled in VA care, which is the gap the rest of this story is about.

Colorado Veterans Die by Suicide at 48.4 per 100,000

VA’s Colorado Veteran suicide data sheet covers 2023, the latest year in the 2025 state packet. After age adjustment, VA said Colorado’s veteran rate was significantly higher than the national veteran rate and higher than the national general-population rate. The unadjusted counts are stark on their own.

VETERAN SUICIDE RATES PER 100,000, 2023

The age rows add to 177. VA notes that age is missing on a small number of deaths, so the all-ages count is 178. Colorado’s all-ages veteran rate of 48.4 sits 37.5% above the national veteran figure of 35.2, and above the Western region’s 37.9. The state’s general suicide rate that year was 26.9 per 100,000; the national general rate was 18.2.

The widest gap is among younger veterans. Coloradans 18 to 34 in the veteran population died at 93.2 per 100,000, nearly twice the national veteran rate of 47.9 for that age. The 35-54 band is the exception, 35.8 in Colorado against 37.3 nationally. Firearms accounted for 135 of the 178 Colorado veteran suicides, or 75.8%.

Mesa County Public Health, asked about 2020 through 2024, said about 20% of local suicide deaths were veterans, while veterans were about 10% of the adult population. A chapel in Grand Junction does not, by itself, close a gap that large.

The 61 Percent Who Never Walk In

Todd Burnett, acting executive director of the VA Office of Suicide Prevention, wrote in March 2026 that 6,398 veterans died by suicide in 2023, 44 fewer than in 2022. He also put the structural problem in one line: 61% of veterans who died by suicide in 2023 were not receiving VA health care in the last year of their life.

THE CARE GAP AROUND THE CHAPEL

• National deaths: 6,398 veteran suicides in 2023, down 44 from 6,442 the year before.
• Outside VA care: 61% of those veterans had not used VA health care in their last year.
• Colorado deaths: 178 veterans, 166 of them men and 12 of them women.
• Main method: Firearms in 135 Colorado veteran suicides, 75.8% of the state total.

The male veteran suicide rate still rose, from 37.3 to 37.8 per 100,000; the female rate rose from 13.7 to 13.9. Among deaths that VA suicide-prevention teams reviewed from 2021 to 2023, the risk factor they flagged most often was pain. A chaplain’s job, in that light, is not a Sunday bulletin. It is sitting with people whose bodies and memories have already worn them down, including the ones who will never badge into a VA hospital.

The Chaplain’s Next Audience Was Community Clergy

Four months after the television segment, VA Western Colorado moved the same mission off campus. In May 2025 the health-care system hosted a free seminar on suicide prevention and moral injury, aimed at locals who could help stop veteran suicides rather than at inpatients already in the building.

That is the second job hiding inside the first. If 61% of veterans who die by suicide were not in VA care, a chapel schedule cannot be the whole program. Pastors, family members, and community chaplains become the people who see the warning signs on a weekday in Delta, Montrose, or a high-country town hours from Grand Junction.

FROM A CHAPEL SEGMENT TO A POLICY FIGHT

1. January 17, 2025: Chaplain Rachel Mikaelson explains chaplain care and the interfaith chapel on Grand Junction television.
2. May 2025: VA Western Colorado hosts a free seminar on suicide prevention and moral injury for people outside the hospital.
3. March 8, 2026: VA publishes the 2025 National Veteran Suicide Prevention Annual Report on 2023 deaths, including the 61% who were not in VA care.
4. April 22, 2026: VA Secretary Doug Collins tells a Liberty University audience that chaplains deliver spiritual care as part of veterans’ treatment.
5. June 30, 2026: The House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs highlights a bill that would require VA to strengthen chaplain and faith-based programs.

Burnett’s office has been pushing enrollment in parallel. Since January 2025, VA said a new outreach campaign led more than 33,000 unenrolled veterans to sign up for care. A February 2025 interoperability push identified and contacted 140,000 at-risk veterans, 40% of whom had not recently been to VA. Chaplain care only matters for those names if someone they trust will walk them to the door.

Who Can See a VA Chaplain in Grand Junction?

Veterans enrolled at VA Western Colorado, and their families, can ask for chaplain care through the medical center or the published chaplain page, with no requirement that they belong to a church. Mikaelson’s television explanation matched how other VA facilities describe the same role: support through clinic visits, hospital stays, and extended care, including for people with no religious affiliation.

WHAT VA CHAPLAINS ACTUALLY DO

• Clinical setting: They work with patients and families in outpatient clinics, hospital rooms, and extended care, not only in a chapel pew.
• Open door: Care is offered across faith traditions and to people who want spiritual support without a denomination.
• Family work: The Grand Junction pitch named families as patients of the service, not bystanders in the hallway.
• Community training: The May 2025 seminar treated local residents as partners in suicide prevention, which is how a rural system stretches one chaplain office across a huge catchment.

VA has long listed chaplains next to peer support, Whole Health, and case management for families after a suicide attempt. Secretary Collins put the same idea in public on April 22, 2026, when he said VA delivers more than medical care and benefits, and that its chaplains deliver spiritual care as well.

VA delivers more than medical care and benefits – our VA chaplains deliver spiritual care as well. Today at Liberty University, I spoke chaplain-to-chaplain about how supporting  Veterans’ faith is a critical component of their care. pic.twitter.com/kuU8L6eJlQ

— VA Secretary Doug Collins (@SecVetAffairs) April 22, 2026

Congress Puts Chaplain Care on the Docket

By summer 2026 the local chapel talk had a bill number in Washington. Rep. David Valadao’s TOURS Act, as described by the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs on June 30, 2026, would require VA to improve its chaplain and faith-based programs as part of whole health and spiritual well-being. The committee framed it as suicide prevention, not interior decorating for hospital chapels.

Collins, speaking chaplain-to-chaplain at Liberty University, made faith a stated piece of clinical care. That is a national argument with a Western Slope test case. A system that already runs an interfaith chapel, and that already dragged suicide prevention into a public seminar, is doing in miniature what the bill would write into policy.

The fiscal 2025 Veterans Crisis Line handled 1.3 million calls, chats, and texts, a 39% increase from the year before, with a 97% veteran satisfaction rate in VA’s accounting. RISK ID, the department’s suicide-risk screen, logged more than 5.3 million screens in calendar 2025. Those are industrial numbers. They still miss the veteran who will talk to a pastor and will not talk to a clerk at a VA desk.

A Badge Some Veterans Will Not Trust

When Collins posted about chaplains, the sharpest replies were not about hymnals. Veterans said they wanted a lawyer, not a chapel, and that they would not trust a VA chaplain because that person still works for VA. Others used the thread to talk about community-care referrals that take weeks. Spiritual care wrapped in a federal badge inherits every delay and slight the medical side already owns.

That objection is why the Grand Junction office’s May seminar matters more than the January television tour of the chapel. A rural veteran who will not enroll still has a family, a hunting partner, and often a congregation. Training those people is the only way chaplain work reaches the 61% who never become inpatients.

VA Western Colorado already put the chapel on television and the suicide brief in a public room. The remaining work is slower: a phone call from a spouse, a pastor who knows the crisis line, a veteran in pain who will sit with a chaplain if someone they trust walks in with them.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do veterans reach chaplain services at VA Western Colorado?

Ask at the local VA health care facility or use the health-care system’s published chaplain page, which is the route Mikaelson pointed to on television. VA also groups chaplains with peer support, Whole Health, and case management when a veteran has survived a suicide attempt, so desk staff in mental health can make the same referral.

Do you need a religious affiliation to see a VA chaplain?

No. VA chaplain offices describe their work as open to every faith and to people with none, and Grand Junction’s chapel is built as an interfaith room rather than a single-tradition sanctuary. The specialist training is in spiritual and religious care, including doubt, grief, and the loss of meaning that follows combat or chronic pain.

What should someone do in a suicide crisis tonight?

Call or text 988 and Press 1 for the Veterans Crisis Line, text 838255, or use the online chat; VA also publishes a crisis conversation handout for family members who need words in the moment. In fiscal 2025 that line handled 1.3 million calls, chats, and texts, so it is staffed as a 24-hour service rather than a business-hours chapel office.

What does an interfaith chapel mean at a VA facility?

It is a room designed for more than one tradition, so a veteran can pray, sit quietly, or meet a chaplain without borrowing another faith’s sanctuary. Mikaelson used Grand Junction’s chapel on air as the visible symbol of that policy, while the actual caseload runs through hospital rooms, clinics, and family meetings that never enter the chapel at all.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of VA chaplain services and published suicide figures, and it is for information only. It is not medical, mental-health, or crisis advice, and it is not a substitute for care from a clinician, a VA chaplain, or emergency services. Readers who are worried about a veteran, or about themselves, should contact a qualified mental-health professional or the Veterans Crisis Line before acting on any of the programs described here. Counts, rates, and program details reflect the VA data sheets, VA statements, and public remarks cited in this piece and can change as later years are released.