Mental Health Care In Veterans

While fighting in combat, soldiers often developed a fatalist attitude towards their lives allowing them to accept their death as fate; this attitude led to a sense of detachment that was tough to kick even when they returned to safer environments. A quarter of soldiers were diagnosed with neuro-psychiatric

That’s why it makes perfect sense to expand and reconstruct the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) to undertake such a massive service. Veterans don’t deserve to be treated like this, the forgotten hero’s, now the homeless, and the starving.

Mental health stigma in the military is defined as, “a dynamic process by which a service member perceives or internalizes this brand or marked identity about himself or herself or people with mental health disorders. ”1 The perceived mental health stigma in the military stems from proximal and distal impacts.1 The proximal impacts include interpersonal outcomes, coping mechanisms, attitudes toward treatment and the distal impacts include the personal well-being, readiness, quality of life, treatment-seeking, and treatment success.1 The United States Air Force has been promoting treatment-seeking through various programs to reduce stigma and facilitate a widespread culture shift that views mental health in the context of readiness and resilience.1 The Air Force has attempted to redefine mental health help-seeking as a sign of strength instead of a sign of weakness.1 Additionally, the Air Force has quadrupled the availability of mental health programs over the past six years.2 The Air Force has provided over seven mental healthcare treatment options to Air Force members.3 These options include: the airman and family readiness center, military family life consultants, installation chaplain, mental health clinic, behavioral health, family advocacy program, and master resilience

If untreated, many veterans my turn to drugs or alcohol. Drugs and alcohol abuse then may cause unemployment, lead to being homeless, and even suicide. Supporters state that every soldier is briefed on mental illnesses before, during, and after each deployment. With the briefings, the hope is that the negative stigma of mental health disorders will go down. Service men and women along with their family, have access to a hotline (Military OneSource) were they can talk to a mental health care professional twenty-four seven.

The VA needs to change the way it deals with Veterans and their bout with homelessness, consistent and worthwhile employment, and mental

Veterans Affairs PTSD Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is the main leading cause for veterans to kill themselves everyday. American soldiers are coming home from the past wars of Vietnam and current wars of Iraq and Afghanistan there suffering from post traumatic stress disorder (ptsd) which is on the rise of returning soldiers. First the effects on soldiers everyday life the hidden effects. Veterans suffering from ptsd/tbi are on part of that 1% that don’t get the help they deserve and killing themselves for no reason due to the fact they are denied help due to lack of funding. One way we know that everyday life of american soldiers are hiding their effects is not telling their families.

In the recent years, the number of mental health professionals providing for the military has dwindled, there is almost no combat-specific psychologists left, and the wait time to be treated for a mental health issue by the Department of Veterans Affairs has drastically increased. Examining MilitaryOneSource and the Department of Veterans Affairs, two of the most highly regarded military health providers, the lack of mental health services for veterans and active duty members has diminished and has resulted in a multitude of veterans going untreated or even ending their own life instead of receiving the help they

Another issue that veterans struggle with when they come back from war is mental illnesses like PTSD. According to “bringing the war back home”, “Of 103 788 OEF/OIF veterans seen at VA health care facilities, 25 658 (25%) received mental health diagnosis(es)”. This disabilities can make getting into the workforce much more difficult and even leave veterans to live on the streets from lack of employment. The solution discovered from this research is that if these mental diseases are caught early enough, the veterans will receive the help they need and be able to continue their normal civilian lives. “Targeted early detection and intervention beginning in primary care settings are needed to prevent chronic mental illness and

In “The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell”, John Crawford shows how war can drastically change soldiers by having psychological effects on them and when soldiers come back from war they can feel like they are alone. Some psychological effects are post-traumatic stress disorder, also known as PTSD, depression,

A constant watch over mental health issues of all military servicemen and women has gone under the radar in the past few years due to a lack of knowing how unrecognizable the problem just might be. The magnitude of this problem is enormous. A recent report finds that the estimates of PTSD range from 4 to 45 percent for those soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan (Cesur, Sabia & Tekin, 2012). Research suggested that other serious medical issues are likely to accompany the PTSD diagnosis, such as cardiovascular disease, and chronic pain (Frayne, et al, 2010). Compiling mental health issues, physical ailments along with family reintegration can prove overwhelming for a returning veteran.

In my opinion, veterans do receive the care they need, but are not provided equal amount of care. Hopefully, with Donald Trump supporting the veterans, during his presidency he will be capable of providing the veterans more support and equality to benefit the veterans needs as well as their

Most veterans who have mental illness, mostly PTSD, do not know how to get help. About eleven percent of the adult homeless population are veterans .The veterans who are suffering from PTSD do not want to get help mostly because they do not have the funds to get the help they need or they are afraid of seeking help. If the government would give more funding to the Veteran Affairs or other organizations, it would be easier for homeless veterans to find the help that they

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in The Things They Carried During the turbulent times of the Vietnam War, thousands of young men entered the warzone and came face-to-face with unimaginable scenes of death, destruction, and turmoil. While some perished in the dense Asian jungles, others returned to American soil and were forced to confront their lingering combat trauma. Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried provides distinct instances of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and reveals the psychological trauma felt by soldiers in the Vietnam War. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD for short, is the most common mental illness affecting soldiers both on and off the battlefield.

Veterans and active-duty members are considerably diverse in individual characteristics and life histories. Veterans refer to retired or discharge military population. Some suggest programs implemented are addressing too broad of a population and should be focused on specific veteran populations. Many veterans develop self- stigma, internalizing the negative beliefs society places on this population, and avoid seeking help. "Each of the military services and the Veterans Administration (VA) have developed educational campaigns to reduce the stigma associated with reporting emotional distress, raise awareness of the risk of suicide, and teach military personnel, veterans, and their family’s suicide prevention strategies (Brenner & Barnes, 2012).

One such mental illness is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. PTSD is already the most common form of mental illness, affecting almost 8% of American adults (PTSD Statistics). PTSD rates are increasing dramatically, particularly among soldiers that see combat, and the use of modern, advanced weaponry (PTSD Statistics). Increases in the rate of occurrence of PTSD in these soldiers can be linked back to this weaponry. Historically, World War I was the first war to utilize the increasingly dangerous methods of warfare such as trench warfare and biological weaponry, which significantly increased the death toll of the war.