Homeless veterans too proud to seek help or unaware

Before you read this, there is something we need to consider. Assuming they returned from combat with no support is part of the problem. While it is true that not all of our veterans had supportive families to return to, the truth is deeper than that. Many families did not understand what combat did to many of them. They did not understand the change and had no tools to cope or help. They ended up making PTSD worse.

There was a time in our life where I reached that point with my husband even though I knew what PTSD and how to help him. I felt as if there was nothing more I could do and I wanted him out. The shelter in Boston was full. Hundreds of others were either there or on the waiting list. If I ended up feeling that hopeless with him, think about how much harder it is for families when they have no understanding at all.

Revisiting those dark days now is painful. We got married 30 years ago. I have seen the worst but I have also seen healing. Not just in him, but in myself as well. Getting help offers hope for them and those who love them. It also restores the idea that they are not worth less than they were when they wore their uniform.

Self-medicating homeless vets not seeking help they need
Bridge Magazine
by Ted Roelofs
13 March 2014

On a bitter January day when the wind chill hit 20 below in Grand Rapids, U.S. Army veteran Chad Long headed from a downtown mission to a drop-in center for the homeless a few blocks away.

He had been homeless four months.

“Man, it sucks to be here,” he said. “I feel like anybody who served (their country) should have a place to lay their head, not with 150 other guys.”

Long, 35, served in Germany from 1999 to 2002. He said he did well enough for himself after the military, earning good money as a construction worker and construction site supervisor. But a drug habit, three knee surgeries and two bulging discs in his back knocked him off his feet.

He said he has been clean for months. But he has yet to seek help from the array of programs available to aid veterans. “I just never reached out,” he said.

Experts say Long is typical of many homeless veterans, individuals either too proud to seek help or unaware of programs to help them find jobs and housing.

“There are all these men out there and they don’t know we are there to help,” said Joyce Hopp, homeless veteran outreach specialist for Goodwill Industries of Greater Grand Rapids, a nonprofit that offers job training and support services for people with barriers to employment.

Vietnam War U.S. Army veteran William Yates, 68, said he found himself homeless in January, following surgery and a lengthy recovery at the Veterans Administration hospital in Ann Arbor.

During his stay there, he lost the Grand Rapids apartment in which he had been living.
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