tssnave

SB,

Here's my answer to your question of what you can do:

If you have a journalistic background and the time to use that talent to help veterans then write about your experience and send it to your local paper and any other media outlet to see if you can collaborate with them on a first person account of what it is like to try to help a disabled vet attempt to win his disability claim. PTSD, unfairly labeled Personality Disorders, mental health care in general are all hot topics in the news right now. Add your voice and your writing talent to the cause of letting the American public know what is going on at the VA in the hopes that a grassroots effort will help affect change at the VA.

The dichotomy of being a psych vet is that you are the person best able to explain your disability but often the least able to do so. I'm bipolar and much of the time I'm totally spun one way or the other (up or down - manic and barely lucid or depressed and barely functioning). Then's there's the murky middle when I do ok for short periods of time and that's when, previously, I would try to work on my claim and currently, you'll see me post on hadit (so if I disappear for weeks or months at a time when we're in the middle of a thread, please forgive my abrupt absence).

Tell everyone you can reach the who, what, why, when, and where of your story, of our stories. Until the American public at large understands and cares about the situation at the VA we will be slogging uphill with an 80 pound rucksack on our back on a seemingly endless forced road march working on a VA claim.

Thanks,
TS Snave