Note: A lot of the problem can be laid squarely on the backs of the VA Regional Offices, and the VA Claim’s process. Can’t work, feel thrown away, no money.. homelessness can cause depression, and add to any PTSD problems.
How many of these veteran’s have claims pending, denied, appealed. Far too many go to a VAMC for help and find the Dr’s won’t help them by writing appropriate notes on their diagnosis, instead give them pills, patches for smoking, Viagra, and everything else, but the counseling they need,
And send them home (less).. see ya in 6 months
I still remember a local vet just back from the war & Walter Reed, where the VA claims rep in Chicago stated.. actually stated… the shrapnel in his body was not service connected
Vets' homelessness, mental problems expected to last decades
NEW YORK — Homelessness, family strains and psychological problems among returning veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will persist in the United States for generations to come, the top U.S. military officer said Thursday.
"This is not a 10-year problem. It is a 50- or 60- or 70-year problem," Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told an audience of the Hudson Union Society, a group that promotes non-partisan debate.
Mullen said he was particularly disturbed by the emergence of homelessness as a problem among war veterans.
"I have started to meet with, in veterans hospitals, homeless veterans" of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said. "And they are every bit as homeless and every bit as tragic as any homeless vet we've ever had. We as a country should not allow that to happen."
At a White House news conference last week, President Obama said some of the funding increases in his proposed budget for veterans affairs are directed at alleviating the problem of homelessness among veterans, which he said is a bigger problem, proportionally, than is homelessness in the rest of the American population.
Mullen said he also was worried by the rising number of suicides among U.S. military members.
"The trends are all in the wrong direction," he said, adding that "we're just at the beginning of understanding" how to deal with the psychological wounds and scars that military members incur during combat service.
"I believe the cumulative effects of these deployments, the pressure that so many are under, the impact of what . . . mostly our soldiers and Marines have been through" on the battlefield "in our eighth year of war has a lot to do with" the suicide and other stress-related problems that are plaguing military members and their families, he said.
Mullen said the military has added hundreds of mental health professionals to help with the problem, yet "we're struggling with respect to that." Another aspect of the problem, he added, is the impact on children, who can suffer severely from the extended and repeated absence of a mother or father going off to war.
In a wide-ranging question-and-answer session with his audience, Mullen also said he was "reasonably comfortable" that Pakistan's nuclear weapons are secure amid a rising tide of insurgent violence aimed at the Pakistani government.
"We have invested in that (effort). They've taken significant steps in recent years, so I'm comfortable," he said. "My biggest concern is that if Pakistan gets to a point where it implodes, you've got a country that could be an Islamist, theocratic country with nuclear weapons which could both use them and proliferate them. One of our goals is to make sure that doesn't happen."
He explicitly linked the Pakistani military's intelligence arm, the Inter-Services Intelligence, to elements of the insurgency inside Pakistan, a connection that others have said helps empower the Taliban and other extremist groups.
"They've got an intelligence organization that must, in my view, change its strategic approach and be completely disconnected from the insurgents. And they're not right now," he said.
The role of Pakistani intelligence was discussed Wednesday at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in which Army Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East and in Afghanistan, said there have been cases in which Pakistani intelligence warned the insurgents of impending U.S. or Pakistani military strikes against them.
Petraeus called those episodes troubling. He said he and Mullen have raised the problem directly with the chief of Pakistani intelligence, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha.
Question
allan
Note: A lot of the problem can be laid squarely on the backs of the VA Regional Offices, and the VA Claim’s process. Can’t work, feel thrown away, no money.. homelessness can cause depression, and add to any PTSD problems.
How many of these veteran’s have claims pending, denied, appealed. Far too many go to a VAMC for help and find the Dr’s won’t help them by writing appropriate notes on their diagnosis, instead give them pills, patches for smoking, Viagra, and everything else, but the counseling they need,
And send them home (less).. see ya in 6 months
I still remember a local vet just back from the war & Walter Reed, where the VA claims rep in Chicago stated.. actually stated… the shrapnel in his body was not service connected
Vets' homelessness, mental problems expected to last decades
By Robert Burns
http://www.azstarnet.com/news/287210.php
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK — Homelessness, family strains and psychological problems among returning veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will persist in the United States for generations to come, the top U.S. military officer said Thursday.
"This is not a 10-year problem. It is a 50- or 60- or 70-year problem," Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told an audience of the Hudson Union Society, a group that promotes non-partisan debate.
Mullen said he was particularly disturbed by the emergence of homelessness as a problem among war veterans.
"I have started to meet with, in veterans hospitals, homeless veterans" of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said. "And they are every bit as homeless and every bit as tragic as any homeless vet we've ever had. We as a country should not allow that to happen."
At a White House news conference last week, President Obama said some of the funding increases in his proposed budget for veterans affairs are directed at alleviating the problem of homelessness among veterans, which he said is a bigger problem, proportionally, than is homelessness in the rest of the American population.
Mullen said he also was worried by the rising number of suicides among U.S. military members.
"The trends are all in the wrong direction," he said, adding that "we're just at the beginning of understanding" how to deal with the psychological wounds and scars that military members incur during combat service.
"I believe the cumulative effects of these deployments, the pressure that so many are under, the impact of what . . . mostly our soldiers and Marines have been through" on the battlefield "in our eighth year of war has a lot to do with" the suicide and other stress-related problems that are plaguing military members and their families, he said.
Mullen said the military has added hundreds of mental health professionals to help with the problem, yet "we're struggling with respect to that." Another aspect of the problem, he added, is the impact on children, who can suffer severely from the extended and repeated absence of a mother or father going off to war.
In a wide-ranging question-and-answer session with his audience, Mullen also said he was "reasonably comfortable" that Pakistan's nuclear weapons are secure amid a rising tide of insurgent violence aimed at the Pakistani government.
"We have invested in that (effort). They've taken significant steps in recent years, so I'm comfortable," he said. "My biggest concern is that if Pakistan gets to a point where it implodes, you've got a country that could be an Islamist, theocratic country with nuclear weapons which could both use them and proliferate them. One of our goals is to make sure that doesn't happen."
He explicitly linked the Pakistani military's intelligence arm, the Inter-Services Intelligence, to elements of the insurgency inside Pakistan, a connection that others have said helps empower the Taliban and other extremist groups.
"They've got an intelligence organization that must, in my view, change its strategic approach and be completely disconnected from the insurgents. And they're not right now," he said.
The role of Pakistani intelligence was discussed Wednesday at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in which Army Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East and in Afghanistan, said there have been cases in which Pakistani intelligence warned the insurgents of impending U.S. or Pakistani military strikes against them.
Petraeus called those episodes troubling. He said he and Mullen have raised the problem directly with the chief of Pakistani intelligence, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha.
"Keep on, Keepin' on"
Dan Cedusky, Champaign IL "Colonel Dan"
See my web site at:
http://www.angelfire.com/il2/VeteranIssues/
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