Homeless veteran – courtesy of PBS.org
A very depressing statistic:
Chance that a death among U.S. service members is a suicide: 1 in 5
And this, from usnews.nbcnews.com:
Through April, the U.S. military has recorded 161 potential suicides in 2013 among active-duty troops, reservists and National Guard members — a pace of one suicide about every 18 hours. The Army, the largest contingent of the armed forces, sustained 109 reported suicides during the first four months, according its latest report.
Soldiers fight for our government from thousands of miles away, yet when they come home, the government does little for them. They can’t even get healthcare for war injuries without waiting years. They can’t find jobs. Many are homeless. They don’t get proper mental health care. When they suffer from suicidal thoughts, there isn’t adequate help for them. They don’t get much of anything.
These are our brothers and sisters. So why is our government doing this to them?
Illuminate 
This is a two sided problem. The VA I go to recently doubled their staff to take care of all of these soldiers. They have outreach programs and a team that goes out to job fairs and other places where the homeless vets maybe. Part of the problem is a lot of these vets don’t want nor will they accept any kind of psych help at all. I have personality talked to some homeless vets I see at the VA and they prefer to be homeless for many reasons. I am not saying this is excuse because even with all of these programs in place I am sure a lot of them still fall through the cracks. At least the VA I go to is trying.
Thanks for telling me that. I didn’t know. Why do some of the vets refuse help?
This is hard for me to answer but I will give it a shot. This is the first war our country has been in since Viet Nam that soldiers are doing unspeakable things just to survive. They will only talk to soldiers who have been there or combat vets like myself. Other soldiers and especially civlians just cant understand what these people went through. A lot of their experiences they dont want to talkto the shrinksbecause they are also civilians, I am the same way. I hope this helped
Oh, I see. Hopefully someone will figure out how to best help them.
I hope you are doing OK. Vets like you deserve to be treated with the utmost respect and gratitude.
Reblogged this on YAHOO THOM and commented:
The Republicans killed the Veterans Jobs Bill…These Veterans served our Country we cannot be indifferent!
Thanks for the reblog!
My Dad is a DAV, very important issue…so you are very welcome! Thanks for the article!
Reblogged this on digger666.
I don’t think you meant us to take your last line, “So why is our government doing this to them?” to be a generally anti-government statement. But to those of your readers who are already anti-government or leaning that way, an anti-government impression reinforces their contribution, even unintentionally, to obstruction of good government action and empowers the enemies of “These are our brothers and sisters!”
Do you mean that to blame the govt on this particular issue gives the govt more power? Or that we are giving the govt power when we blame them?