Good veterans sites and advocates end up being harder and harder to find

This morning started out with reading this. PTSD:Secret epidemic could dog veterans about combat veterans in Australia trying to heal from Combat PTSD. Bringing Awareness to Invisible Wounds

It is a great idea but at 7:30 this morning, the videos were unavailable. It is easy to tell the massive need out there for information on PTSD because this video series was only uploaded yesterday and several have over 100 views.

It took me back to 2005 when I was playing with videos trying to do something different.

I knew no matter how much I wrote, the OEF and OIF veterans grew up learning a different way from my generation because of the Internet. They didn't want to read anymore. I taught myself how to make videos to reach them.

These videos were up on YouTube until 2009 when they started to block music. I moved them onto Great Americans. While they were on YouTube they were seen thousands of times.

I received this email from a professor at the University of Rotterdam because no one else was doing these videos back then.

I work as a psychologist at the faculty of psychology of the Erasmus University Rotterdam (The Netherlands).

On the internet I stumbeled upon your video about PTSD. I would like to ask your permission to use this video on our website for stricty educational purposes.

I received this from a Naval Officer

I saw your PTSD presentation online and want to share it with our Sailors returning from Iraq/Afghanistan.

Thanks for providing this much needed information,

This is the video they wanted to show.

This video focuses on the families as well as the veterans.


This video explains what PTSD is like.

Combat and PTSD along with military suicides have been reported on thousands of times on my blog yet even now there are way too many sites giving out very bad information. Yesterday I read that "all suicides are preventable" and was so appalled I had to leave a comment that the claim was not true and that it was very harmful to the families after someone they love committed suicide. It is bad enough these families blame themselves when they had no clue what to do but even harder when they did everything right and another life was gone all the same.

There are now so many sites and videos out there that my work has been buried in the pile but it is still just as spot on as it was when I started and hardly no one else was doing anything about it.

I refuse to live in a world where no one cares about the troops or our veterans. I thank God everyday that I don't have to. More and more information is coming out to the public. News that used to be found only after long hours spent searching for the data and reports. The trick is finding the real stories, correcting the wrong data and attempting to find solutions while holding the powerful accountable. This gets harder to do everyday.

While so many people go onto Facebook posting about how much weight they lost, what they had for dinner or what kind of mood they are in as if everyone wants to know what they are up to second by second, I have an automatic feed of my posts going to Twitter and Facebook, yet few even bother to read them. I'll be out in a group and bring up something I read that day but few have a clue about it. When they do they end up telling me they had a Facebook link to it.

I won't give up on them. I know them. I know they do care. They are an example of how little news they really get. Is it a matter of not enough time to read these stories or is it more a matter of they use these sites for fun instead of doing something to help someone else?

Over and over again we read how someone on Facebook did in fact make a difference in someone else's life because they read a heartbreaking story, yet even in military/veterans groups there are also horrible posts offering empty advice and even less compassion. None of this makes sense to me anymore.

When I started in all of this, the Internet was an infant and I had to use the library for information. I wrote in local newspapers. Now there are too many sites and too many "experts" making things worse instead of better.

Good veterans sites and advocates end up being harder and harder to find.