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Jacob Grygla
Michelle Szetela
English 1010 Monday, Wednesday 9:45-12:35
31 July 2012
How should the U.S. Support Returning Veterans?
What should the government do about soldiers returning home from war? We know
that this has been a long and difficult war with many soldiers coming back with PTSD and other
issues but really how much should the government, who sent them there, care about them
after returning home? There have been previous wars this, defiantly isn’t the first so what
happened to those vets? Plus how much does it cost to deal with such a wide variety of wounds
some being mental, some physical and others social. This leads to how should the U.S. support
returning Veterans?
A good place to start into looking at what the Federal government does for its troops is
to look at the different issues returning vets deal with. In “Financial Well-Being and Post
deployment Adjustment Among Iraq and Afghanistan War Veterans” the issue of veterans
coming home and not having financial security and struggling with issues like: post-traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury (TBI), and major depression disorder (MDD)
leading to increased financial problems. These issues along with disrupted family life have made
it hard for many veterans to get or keep jobs. With this difficulty of mental health and the lack
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of financial support it can lead to spirals of depression and financial problems as shown in
“Financial Well-Being and Post deployment Adjustment” page 670, vol. 177.
How then can the returning soldiers be treated and able to live a normal life? In
response to the mental and medical problems with vets the government relies on the VA
(veteran’s affairs) to help returning soldiers. With so many new soldiers needing treatment the
VA has become overwhelmed and understaffed. As Chris Adams found in his research
Despite a decade-long effort to treat veterans at all VA locations, nearly 100 local VA clinics
provided virtually no mental health care in 2005. Beyond that, the intensity of treatment has
worsened. Today, the average veteran with psychiatric troubles gets about one-third fewer
visits with specialists than he would have received a decade ago. (Adams para. 9)
This leads to the question of how much should the Federal government be spending on VA care
and how that money should be distributed?
The latest data on VA spending I could find was again by Chris Adams. He found that in
2005 some 2.19 billion was spent on VA mental health care. Which may seem like a lot but this
actually is only enough for about $2,581 per veteran in 2005(Adams, “VA Ill Equipped” Para.
30). With this lower amount of money per vet and over increasing number of veterans the VA is
struggling to keep up. However the budget of the VA is going up. This year the total budget of
the VA is 140.3 billion, according to VA webpage. Also individual states have been helping the
VA by having some kind of system for vets. Hopefully someday the VA will be able to keep up
with demands but this problem of being understaffed needs to be address and the VA has.
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Across the nation new treatment centers and hospitals have begun to be built and older
centers refurbished. Even the VA hospital here in SLC has been under construction since I
returned home from Afghanistan in 2011. In the USA Today’s article “The VA is reaching out”
says that some 23 new sites were built in 2008 and more were planned for the upcoming years.
It also says that the VA was trying to improve its staff by being able to realizing mental health
issues and having a suicide prevention clinic in each hospital (VA is reaching out, para. 3,4).
The suicide prevention clinics were installed to combat the extremely high number of
suicides that the military has been going through in the past few years. With numbers of
suicides among soldiers passing both OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom) and OEF (Operation
Enduring Freedom) death tolls the VA has been force to respond. In the article “We Pretend
Vets don’t Exist” by Anthony Swofford, he found that some 18 veterans’ committed suicide
every day and the VA didn’t have the man power or the resources to handle all the incoming
cases. Which leads to the question, is it the Federal Governments job deal with all these suicide
cases or is it the job of the society in which the veterans belong?
One group of not lead by the government has found that extreme sports have been a
major help in dealing with veterans with mental issues. To take the boredom out and bring back
the adrenalin rush of war, without the issue of death close at hand. In Missoula, MT the group
called XSports4Vets was the leader in helping returning vets. They take the vets riverboarding,
rock climbing, mountain biking, sky diving, and rafting to help them keep the thought of suicide
away. Groups like this can be found in many states now and most are non-profit organizations.
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These groups have also been helpful in influencing people with PTSD and other issues
like MMD. They help to get the vets out of the daily grind and pull them together to make new
friends and social groups. It was found that most veterans prefer the company of other
veterans than they do of civilian friends. This was found in the research which says:
The lack of feeling understood by others mediated the association between PTSD and
lower life satisfaction. One implication of this finding is that veterans with PTSD who
reported low life satisfaction may benefit from veteran peer support groups, as veterans
with PTSD often report veteran peers constitute the largest part of their social network
and that they may provide a greater source of emotional support than non-veteran
friends and family. (Southwick 145)
In this way veterans can relieve stress in a healthy way and have an emotional “battle buddy”
to lean on.
Family support was also seen as one of the major ways to combat the stresses of
returning home from war, with understanding spouses and life partners being some of the most
helpful in dealing with mental struggle. However, with education being given to them though
programs like yellow ribbon the military is trying to increase family awareness of mental issues
involved with being sent to battle. Suicide awareness classes are given at yellow ribbon events
before, during, and after solders go to combat to the soldiers closest family members. With
positive results of the yellow ribbon awareness programs, more will probably been seen in the
future.
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The yellow ribbon also deals with returning soldiers receiving educational benefits. With
the Montgomery GI Bill many soldiers have gone to school but with increasing college prices
the need of tuition assistance has come into play. This is why the Department of Veterans
Affairs made available the yellow ribbon funds to make schooling available to more vets. As
more veterans go to college some have found it helpful to form groups to get involved in and
help each other with issues like PTSD. One group in Minnesota was formed when a veteran was
having issues receiving funding. He took it upon himself to write state legislature and had them
write into state legislation that students cannot be punished for late VA payments. Even with its
occasional mishaps the GI bill has helped many veterans, including me, be able to attend
college and improve their lives.
College for veterans can be a challenge in itself. With such a high number of students
that don’t understand war and yet have a voice to protest some vets get a hostile environment
there. Being called a war “lovers” and worse has been one reason some vets choose not to
attend but this is slowly changing with groups like the one started by Andrew Davis. The VFW
(Veterans of Foreign Wars) has helped him and people like him establish groups to band
together. Not only veterans are involved in these groups either but family members of soldiers
have been getting involved. With so many people having gone overseas to fight many people
have a family member or friend they know that has gone and want to be involved. My friend of
12+ years who I was the best man at his wedding finds time to go to returning soldiers’
homecoming and hold flags to show his support.
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Not all family gets the good side of the returned veterans though. With fathers and
husbands, wives and mothers returning home with PTSD many children and spouses have had
to deal with hardships. Again the yellow ribbon program has helped educate them by bring
more families together. It encourages and even pays for families to be active in healthy ways. It
also has camps and outings for children of soldiers both for when their parent is gone and when
they return. Also counseling is being offered to couples with marriage issues. The wait time for
some of these programs maybe long but most are beneficial.
The question though of why should American care, and pay for, all these programs to
help veterans is still on the table. This war on terror started 11+ years ago and most feel it’s
gone on long enough or too long. At this point the support for the troops is highly revering
them as hero’s but how long will that last. An article written by Andrew J. Bacevich says that
with Americans not seeing themselves as paying for the war the thought of soldiers going to die
is heroic and not as much seen as a duty that all people should accept. With the views of Dr.
James Wright the issue of the soldiers coming home and being seen as warrior elite and society
embracing them as heroes so of course society should take care of the soldier upon returning.
He goes on to remind us what President Franklin Roosevelt said in 1933 “no person, because he
wore a uniform, must therefore be placed in a special class of beneficiaries” (Bracevich 2).This
makes it rather hard to tell if the American society should be willing to pay large amounts of
money to a class of soldiers going to fight wars for them.
Could there be other ways to help veterans than just giving them money. What if there
was some sort of government incentive for hiring veterans? What if we could “teach veterans
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to fish” in some way? The GI Bill was already brought up and is being used to bring the military
class people to higher education but what about employer training on how to accept PTSD
veterans into the work place? Maybe getting veterans the training to get jobs that would supply
their own heath care plan would ease the strain on the VA. Michael Blecker, a Vietnam veteran,
was the one who originally made me wonder how much the U.S. should support its veterans.
With his article published in the NY times called just that “How much should the U.S. support its
veterans”. Blecker sees that a job as one of the most important thing this country can do for
those who have served.
Asking around my unit that returned home Oct. 2011 from a combat tour in
Afghanistan, I found at least 5 guys without jobs and quite a few more in jobs that were far
under their qualifications. One of my buddies has a job packaging diapers when, less than a
year ago he was the driver of a million dollar vehicle finding IED (Improvised Explosive Devises)
in Afghanistan. With our vast knowledge of IED’s and combat very little can be seen as
qualifications in the civilian world. However, with training employers could be able to see this
side and be able to bring the veterans back to work.
With the advent of groups like the Swords to Plowshares created by Vietnam veterans in
San Francisco they have help many vets with job opportunities. They also provide training
opportunities for as many as they can afford. They accept donations and give back to the
community by producing more skilled labor to the work force. If there were more groups like
this would the community pay for them. Or should it be only the job of the VA to deal with the
high numbers of unemployed and homeless veterans.
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In any case we have learned the VA is falling behind and even with higher amounts of
funding it may never be enough. Maybe we should embrace the philosophy of Dr. James
Wright,
There should be no military action authorized by the United States that does not include
income- and corporate-tax surcharges…sufficient to cover all of the operating cost of
the war and to create a trust fund to provide for lifetime support for those who serve
and sacrifice in war. (Becevich, pg.3)
This could even be the key to keeping America out of future wars and if the need ever did arise,
to guarantee the support of our troops. That being said it would never happen.
Someday, hopefully sooner than later, when this war does end the VA should be able to
catch up to its demand and the veteran will be taken care of. Until that day with a 140+ billion
dollar budget the VA does the best it can. With the help of state and local groups trying to help
their veterans maybe it will be enough to turn this horrible rate of suicides down and improve
the lives of the vets and their families. However, as American’s if we pull together and become
educated on the issues involved with those struggling with PTSD and other mental health issues
maybe individually we can do more.
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Work Citied
Adams, Chris. "VA System Ill-Equipped to Treat Mental Anguish of War." McClatchy Newspapers. Feb.
10 2007: n.p. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 31 Jul 2012.
Adams, Chris. "States Step up to Aid Vets Returning from Iraq." McClatchy Newspapers. 13 Mar
2008: n.p. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 30 Jul 2012
Beckham, Jean. "Financial Well-Being And Post deployment Adjustment Among Iraq And
Afghanistan War Veterans." Military Medicine 177.6 (2012): 669-675. Academic Search Premier.
Web. 31 July 2012.
Bacevich, Andrew J. "How the U.S. Treats its Soldiers." International Herald Tribune: 21. ProQuest
Newsstand. May 26 2012. Web. 31 July 2012 .
Ephron, Dan and Childress, Sarah. "Forgotten Heroes." Newsweek Vol. CXLIX, No. 10. 05 Mar 2007:
28-37. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 31 Jul 2012.
Heller, Josey. "From Combat to College: War Veterans on Campus." VFW Magazine Vol. 94, No. 1.
Sept. 2006: 14+. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 31 Jul 2012.
Peake, James. "VA Is Reaching Out." USA TODAY. 23 May 2008: A10. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 30
Jul 2012.
Rosen, Craig. "Relationships Among PTSD Symptoms, Social Support, And Support Source In
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Veterans With Chronic PTSD." Journal Of Traumatic Stress 21.4 (2008): 394-401. Academic
Search Premier. Web. 31 July 2012.
Southwick, Steven. "The Role Of Coping, Resilience, And Social Support In Mediating The
Relation Between PTSD And Social Functioning In Veterans Returning From Iraq And
Afghanistan." Psychiatry: Interpersonal & Biological Processes 75.2 (2012): 135-149. Academic
Search Premier. Web. 31 July 2012.
Swofford, Anthony. "'We Pretend the Vets Don't Even Exist'." Newsweek. 28 May 2012: SIRS
Issues Researcher. Web. 30 Jul 2012.
“United States Department of Veterans Affairs” VA office of Budget. 13 Feb. 2012. Web. 31 July 2012.