Where do homeless veterans come from?

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
January 3, 2015

Patricia Driscoll, president of the Armed Forces Foundation and CEO of Frontline Defense Systems, wrote "Put veterans back in their homes" January 2, 2015 on the Courier Journal. It was this part of the article that made me gag.

"One major sample released by the American Psychological Association estimates that two-thirds of homeless Iraq and Afghanistan veterans suffer from PTSD."

Two thirds of OEF-OIF homeless veterans have PTSD. That means they didn't get the help they needed when they got out of the military. It also means they didn't get what they needed while in the military either.

Epiphany

3. a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.
4. a literary work or section of a work presenting, usually symbolically, such a moment of revelation and insight.

My epiphany came in 2009 when I read about Comprehensive Soldier Fitness repeating the same failed attempts Battlemind tried to do. Comprehensive Soldier Fitness will make it worse May 29, 2009

"If you promote this program the way Battlemind was promoted, count on the numbers of suicides and attempted suicides to go up instead of down. It's just one more deadly mistake after another and just as dangerous as sending them into Iraq without the armor needed to protect them."

Comprehensive Soldier Fitness was designed as a research project but the military bought into it and pushed it without even knowing if it would work or not. When it failed, they continued to push it no matter how deadly the results were.

Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, American Psychologist Martin E. P. Seligman, PhD, and Michael D. Matthews and was approved by the American Psychological Association.

Dark Side of Comprehensive Soldier Fitness
Mandatory "resilience training" program for all U.S. soldiers raises concerns.
by Roy Eidelson, Ph.D. in Dangerous Ideas
Published on March 25, 2011

Why is the world's largest organization of psychologists so aggressively promoting a new, massive, and untested military program? The APA's enthusiasm for mandatory "resilience training" for all U.S. soldiers is troubling on many counts.

The January 2011 issue of the American Psychologist, the American Psychological Association's (APA) flagship journal, is devoted entirely to 13 articles that detail and celebrate the virtues of a new U.S. Army-APA collaboration.

Built around positive psychology and with key contributions from former APA president Martin Seligman and his colleagues, Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF) is a $125 million resilience training initiative designed to reduce and prevent the adverse psychological consequences of combat for our soldiers and veterans.

While these are undoubtedly worthy aspirations, the special issue is nevertheless troubling in several important respects: the authors of the articles, all of whom are involved in the CSF program, offer very little discussion of conceptual and ethical considerations; the special issue does not provide a forum for any independent critical or cautionary voices whatsoever; and through this format, the APA itself has adopted a jingoistic cheerleading stance toward a research project about which many crucial questions should be posed. We discuss these and related concerns below.

So where did it begin? Where did homeless veterans come from? Why did they end up on the streets after surviving combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan? Why didn't the families have what they needed to still stand by their sides after the stress of deployments ended and they were back home?

The logo for Comprehensive Soldier Fitness seems to have all the answers. After all, it has strong bodies and minds, spiritual strength and family support, so it all sounds so good.  They planned on us not paying attention.  They planned on us being too busy with reality TV shows to notice what the reality was for them.  They depended on us to let them just go on doing whatever they wanted to do.

Above all this crap, they actually felt sure no reporter would dare ask the questions that needed to be asked and answered.

They didn't count on the reporters with the Dallas Morning News and NBC out of Texas not only asking questions, but getting the answers.

About this series

“Injured Heroes, Broken Promises,” a joint investigative project between The Dallas Morning News and NBC5 (KXAS-TV), examines allegations of harassment and mistreatment in the U.S.’ Warrior Transition Units, which were created to serve soldiers with physical and psychological wounds. Reporters David Tarrant, Scott Friedman and Eva Parks based their findings on dozens of interviews with soldiers, Army officials and medical experts, and hundreds of pages of military documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

Related Stories

Part 1: Wounded soldiers allege mistreatment in the Army’s Warrior Transition Units
Complaints about wounded warriors’ treatment pile upBenn sought to help, but PTSD hindered him
Editorial: Wounded warriors deserve better
Army orders new training for Warrior Transition Units

More from NBC 5

NBC 5 takes a closer look at Warrior Transition Units
Hundreds of soldiers allege mistreatment at Army Warrior Transition Units
Injured soldiers question training of WTU leaders

This is what Comprehensive Soldier Fitness did. It made them think they were weak and that is why they were suffering. When the DOD failed to reduce suicides, they came up with excuse after excuse. When they came home, the message had been delivered and their fate was sealed.

Families had nothing to fight for them with.

The VA has failed, but it began to fail when troops were first sent into Afghanistan in 2001 and they already had a backlog of claims from older veterans.

The DOD failed but they began to send soldiers out with the wrong idea already drilled into their brains.

Reporters failed when they ignored the cries for help. Other than printing heartbreaking stories after suicide, they didn't bother to find out why suicides went up after everyone was doing more.

Congress failed when they didn't bother to find out what they got wrong in other bills they wrote, passed and funded before they rinsed and repeated them.

Above all, we failed because we just didn't care enough to save their lives. So what do we do now there are even more home after combat in Afghanistan?