There is a big problem in this country and it the responsibility of every person in this country to get it fixed. Our men and women who are serving our country in the military are being denied mental health services to help them heal from PTSD /TRAUMA/DEPRESSION. They are killing themselves while waiting for appointments, medication, and benefits to live on. Most of us who have a bad day don't have a clue what living with depression is like. Those of us who live with depression know how important it is to have treaters who can work with us and remind us that our thoughts of worthlessness, uselessness, helplessness, is the disease talking. Oh yes, depression does have a voice and it is a lethal one. It shouts at you that you will never be worth anything to anybody and that your problems are poisoning those you love. It screams that it is dragging your loved ones down and how could they possibly benefit from you being in their life. It totally convinces you that you are not important enough anyway so sure if there isn't an appointment available for 8 weeks, then of course you will have to just try to make it till then but really don't know how you will live through the next hour, never mind the next day or the next week. Do you get the picture? These are the people that have been away from home, families, friends, their total support systems. These are the people that put one foot in front of the other to do their job, never knowing when they are going to hear that God awful click and...everything is blown up around them and if not them, the person next to them is included. They are under gun fire and all the other awful things that war puts in their path.
Red tape, paperwork, applications, etc.be damned. Any military person who has been put in a combat situation should be able to walk into ANY MENTAL HEALTH FACILITY at any time and ask for help and GET IT IMMEDIATELY! Paper work can wait. Red tape can be cut. There should not be one delay, one excuse, or one bit of hesitancy. If it means someone accompanies that person to a place where help is available, because there isn't a therapist on site, so be it. It need not be a specialist in that moment, though that would be the ideal longer term expectation, but at that point any one with assessment skills and knowledge of what depression/ptsd/trauma can do to a person could certainly be helpful.
Everyone worries about who is going to pay;. Haven't they paid enough? They have VA benefits. The government has to pay.
What brings me to this Memorial Day rant? I just heard of another of our finest who took his own life while waiting for an appointment at a VA facility that was 8 weeks away. Waiting in hope to get some medication to help his ptsd symptoms and depression, waiting for his benefits to get processed. They finally did get processed last week. Two weeks after he died.
I am afraid I don't understand what is so hard about getting this help more available to our service men and women. We can come up with complicated health care plans, huge stimulus packages, and legislation that our leaders vote on without even reading because they get the package at the last minute. We send help to the middle east so people can fight for their freedom, we try to do all we can when natural disasters happen both in our own country and countries across the world, as we should. Now PLEASE tell me why we can't get our own soldiers the help they need when they need it.?
I agree with you, Nanypat! First of all, one problem is that it involves government - anything having to do with government goes at a snail's pace. But there HAS to be some way around it. My guess is that there's a shortage, in some areas, of mental health professionals, particularly psychiatrists. We need more who are trained in treatment of PTSD.
It's a real shame when a vet takes his/her life because of not being able to get adequate help. I think, too, of the vets from earlier wars when they didn't even KNOW about PTSD. My dad was one of them; he could still use help but he'll never get it now because he'd think he's too old and that there's really nothing wrong with him.
Let's hope they get this problem fixed and make it a priority to take care of our veterans better than this.
I guess I get a little wound up when i think of what these people have gone through and then are treated so poorly when they should be getting the best treatment this country can possibly give.
My Dad was in World War 2 and it is only clear to me now that he showed all the signs of depression, but mental illness was never mentioned in my house much like the word sex. If you pretend it doesn't exist, then it doesn't. Heavens only knows how the four of us were born!
Even with my difficulties, they pretended as much as possible that it didn't exist, therefore I felt like I shouldn't either.
I hope that just by writing my little rant anyway that maybe it will help one person to think more about those brave men and women and they do for us. pat