Florida Looking At 51,000 Veterans With PTSD

I go all over Central Florida for veterans events. There is always something going on for veterans in this state however, there is something going on that isn't good for veterans. Why weren't we ready for them?

Cape Coral veterans support group offered peer support but the VA wanted to break them up.

No doubt the 10 men who were booted out of the Veterans Administration Healthcare Center in Cape Coral were treated shabbily. These guys are combat veterans who fought in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. They all suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD, a mental disorder that can develops following a terrifying events like those that happen in war.

Every Friday for the past 18 months the men have held their support group at the VA Clinic offices. And they wanted to continue those meetings there with their current group leaders.

The VA has a different idea. It wants one of two peer specialists, employees who are certified mental health professionals, to help run the group; something the members of this PTSD support group have refused to allow.

The current group leader is a trained volunteer, Luis Casilla. A 63-year-old Vietnam vet, Casilla is a trained peer specialist with more than a decade of experience.

According to the report there were 21 volunteer-led mental health groups in the Bay Pines alone. Nice work taking away something that was working for our veterans.

"Veterans commit suicide at double and sometimes triple the rates of civilian suicides, with the rates varying from state to state. The veteran suicide rate has grown annually at more than double the percentage of the civilian rate." Florida veteran suicides, as far as they know, are one out of four.

Last year WJCT News reported that Florida had 5,500 homeless veterans, again, that they know of.

The Miami Herald reported Florida is having another issue few journalists have been taking about.

“The Forgotten Soldier is just the beginning of the dementia avalanche that is coming our way,” the public defenders wrote. “The Florida mental health system is completely ill-equipped to handle this crisis.”

Miami-Dade County Circuit Judge Steve Leifman, chairman of the Florida Supreme Court Task Force on Substance Abuse and Mental Health Issues in the Court issued another warning along with

Florida having the fastest growing veterans population at 1.7 million.

“12 percent of everyone over 18 years of age in Florida is a veteran,” said Leifman. “And, because of these last two very difficult conflicts, we’re looking at possibly 51,000 veterans in Florida with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or traumatic brain injury, which puts them at very high risk of criminal justice activity.”

While it is wonderful that motorcycle veterans groups always managed to support each other,it is all about brotherhood for them, the same cannot be said about other groups working on veterans issues. They end up being all about themselves instead of sharing their strengths and learning how to fix their weaknesses.

UPDATE

House Veterans’ Affairs Chairman Miller and Ranking Member Brown Comment on Jacksonville VA Clinic

(Washington, DC) With respect to the Jacksonville VA clinic, House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller and House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Ranking Member Corrine Brown issued the following statements:

Chairman Miller said: “After the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs fought hard to uncover systemic problems with accessing care at VA facilities across the nation, Congress and President Obama moved quickly to provide the department with more than $15 billion in emergency funds to fix these issues. The Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act, which became law last August, gave VA $10 billion to pay for non-VA medical care for veterans facing long waits and $5 billion to increase access to VA care through the hiring of physicians and other medical staff and by improving the department’s physical infrastructure. Yet even as veterans confront treatment delays to this day, VA has left the vast majority of this money unspent. It’s well past time for the department to begin using this money the way Congress and the president intended: to get veterans the care they have earned in a timely fashion.”

Ranking Member Brown added: “When I first proposed the Jacksonville clinic to Under Secretary of Health, Dr. Jonathan Perlin, in 2006, he promised that a new clinic would be built in Jacksonville’s Northside. Prior to the opening of the clinic, Jacksonville area veterans had to travel to as many as a dozen separate locations to get treated for their service connected disabilities.

Yet by working with Shands-Jacksonville Hospital, the University of Florida, and the city of Jacksonville, the VA was able to build a facility that would bring all of these specialties together. The clinic broke ground in 2011 and opened to the public in April of 2013, and because of the large number of underserved veterans in the Jacksonville area, the clinic, ironically, has been a victim of its own success, and is now at full capacity.

The Jacksonville Out-Patient Clinic, in fact, is a state of the art health care center. Its roughly 300,000 square feet makes it one of the largest clinics in the country; and it brings under one roof many of the existing services that were previously spread out around the city. Moreover, it adds new services that were not previously available; including primary medical care and mental health care, audiology, optometry, orthopedics, cardiology, dental, dermatology, nutrition, physical therapy, podiatry, pharmacy, dialysis, pain management, otolaryngology, TBI Rehabilitation and 5 new outpatient surgical procedure rooms.

Last November, I met with the leadership of the Jacksonville Outpatient Clinic to learn about the details behind the recent reports regarding the wait times for new patients. And at the present time, the Jacksonville clinic is working to address the unexpected increase in VA patients by hiring more doctors, authorizing leases for additional space for the Jacksonville clinic, and expanding hours of operation. Along with my colleagues on the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, I will remain vigilant to ensure that the Jacksonville VA clinic; as well as all VA health clinics across the nation, are receiving the necessary funding to fully serve our veterans and make sure that the Choice Program is operating effectively and efficiently.”

Yep, both are from Florida