US struggles with surge of returning veterans
Monday, August 16, 2010
When reporters heard the words coming out of the mouths of politicians, did they ever think to ask exactly what they meant by "support the troops" when they said it in speeches? Did reporters ever bother to read the transcripts from the speeches when some members of congress were saying they couldn't afford to increase the funding for the VA with "two wars to pay for" as if that was supposed to make any sense at all? Nope. They just let them get away with saying whatever they wanted to.
Five years ago on my other blog, Screaming in an Empty Room, I was screaming but no one heard me. Three years ago I started to scream even louder but no one heard me. All the work of putting together these stories in one place so that people could find out what a huge problem was going on as well as find someone going through the same thing, did very little good.
So here we have a great article about 5 pages long and really worth the read. This is the point I want to focus on right now so that nobody ever tries to minimize the crisis we are already in, how we got here but above all, does something before the tsunami hits!
In 2001, before the troops were sent to Afghanistan, this should have all been prepared for because the data was in from Vietnam veterans but no one was paying attention. Now we see case after case of veterans committing suicide, families destroyed, arrests, long lines at the VA topped off with the fact less than half seek help. They are talking about changing the name from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to Injury as if that will help. It won't do any good when the veterans are facing all these failures.
Tsunami of PTSD Related Criminal Cases Coming: New Tool for Defense Attorneys to Be Released Soon
Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) May 07, 2012
The National Veterans Foundation is preparing to launch The Attorneys’ Guide to Defending Veterans in Criminal Court in June. This 700+ page publication will provide attorneys, judges, expert witnesses, and others who work with veterans, the very cutting-edge in understanding the nature of combat stress, its ties to criminal behavior, and how we can avoid repeating mistakes made with past generations of returning war veterans. The book will include contributions from leading experts in the fields of law, history, medicine, mental health, and social work in order to provide comprehensive coverage.
More than 2 million Americans have now served in Iraq or Afghanistan. A 2008 RAND Corporation study found that, of the 1.7 million who had served in the war zones at that time, more than 300,000 were suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (“PTSD”), and another 320,000 from Traumatic Brain Injury (“TBI”). Only about half of these troops, it found, had reported or sought help for their condition. Untreated, many of these psychologically-injured veterans are acting out in reckless, self-destructive and, sometimes, violent ways that bring them into contact with the criminal justice system.
History tells us that as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down, the numbers of troubled veterans flooding into criminal courts will swell. Emerging research reveals a pattern of traumatized combat veterans surfacing in the criminal justice system following every major American conflict. Unfortunately, veterans of past conflicts were often treated quite harshly when their psychological injuries led them into criminal behavior.
This was particularly true in the wake of Vietnam when hundreds of thousands of psychologically-injured veterans returned home to a largely hostile American public who had come to blame them for an unpopular war. These veterans were often stigmatized and literally discarded when their psychological injuries led them to criminal behavior. read more here
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