“Approximately 15% of the military personnel who have returned from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will experience significant posttraumatic stress symptoms following deployment (Ramchand et al., 2010). At least one quarter of veterans from these wars who access Department of Veterans Affairs health care services have received a diagnosis of PTSD (PTSD; Office of Public Health and Environmental Hazards, Veterans Health Administration, 2010)” (Ruzek et al., page 3). “When 2,230 soldiers tested positive for PTSD, less than 50% had eight or less follow up appointments, and less than 22% had only one,” (Hoge, “PTSD Treatment”). On top of that, “64,000 veterans made appointments for care and never got them,” (Glazer, “Abandoned at Home”). The issue of how to aid our struggling Armed Force heroes is an ongoing controversial topic in our country dire for attention. 

For veterans, dealing with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or any other mental or physical illness can hinder the enjoyment of life, increase the likelihood of suicide attempts, and damage their family dynamic. A study from Vlatka Boricˇevic´ Marsˇanic´ states that “suicide attempts are common among inpatient adolescent offspring of male PTSD veterans” ("Suicide Attempts among Offspring of PTSD Veterans”).  “Karney and colleagues (2008) examined the existing literature to identify the immediate and long-term consequences of PTSD and depression. Deployed service members who develop PTSD or depression may be at risk of other anxiety disorders, declines in physical functioning and other physical diseases, adverse education, employment, and relationships outcomes, homelessness, and an increased morality risk, including a higher risk of dying by suicide” (Ruzek et al., page 27). Children with paternal figures struggling with PTSD are at a higher risk for “suicide, somatization, depression, anxiety, hyperactivity, delinquency, poor socialization, aggression, academic dysfunction, and even PTSD-like symptoms themselves. The influence of paternal war-related PTSD on offspring behavior problems is potentially complex, reflecting both heritable vulnerability to mental illnesses and multiple effects on childhood environment” (“Suicide Attempts among Offspring of PTSD War Veterans”). 

“Suicide is the second leading cause of death in the Marine Corps (U.S. Marine Corps, 2009), second also among young, enlisted Army men (Inspector General, U.S. Department of Defense, 2008), and consistently among the top three causes of death in the Navy (U.S. Navy, 2006)” (Ruzek et al., page 110). Increasing suicide and homelessness rates in U.S. veterans is an issue that is not silent. Multiple organizations in the U.S. support and raise money for those struggling including Disabled American Veterans, United States Veterans Initiative, and the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. A reason some of these veterans are becoming homeless is because they have not been given the care that they need to hold stable jobs. Whether it is the need for surgery, mental treatments, or medications, the veterans that are ending up on the streets are being neglected by the one organization that should be doing all in their power to aid these men and women as they deserve. As a country we should be treating these people as our heroes, not neglecting their struggles and leaving them for dead on the streets or pushing them to death in their own homes. These people are heroes fighting for our freedom. They should have their freedom when they return home. 

Other factors to be considered when attempting to aid these struggling men and women are the side effects of experiencing an untreated mental illness. The hippocampus, the region of the brain that is associated with memory and regulating emotion, has been reported to “reduce in volume and impair short-term verbal memory in Vietnam combat veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and in women with abuse-related PTSD” (Vythilingam et al., page 1). Links to PTSD and brain shrinkage has been discovered in the study by Vythilingam stating that “Deployed veterans with PTSD, deployed veterans without PTSD, and non-deployed reservists had significantly smaller whole hippocampal volume and lower scores on immediate and delayed verbal and visual retrieval compared with healthy civilians” (page 1). Major depression and increased stress can also be linked to having a smaller hippocampus in the brain. “Depression is the second most commonly studied mental health condition among service members, but thus far no studies have been able to specify whether service members were depressed before deployment or whether their depressive symptoms emerged in theater or upon returning home. However, Schell and Marshall (2008) did find that combat trauma was the best predictor of depression among individuals previously deployed” (Ruzek et al., page 26).

The Veterans Affair Hospitals should be a safe haven for our wounded U.S. soldiers and should be dedicating everything to making our veterans’ lives more enjoyable. Instead, it has become a road block, only prolonging their struggles. These men and women spend weeks, months, even years waiting for the help they deserve. And sometimes, that help never comes. One man knows this struggle far too well. Curtis Shanley, a marine veteran trying to receive medical aid for his almost destroyed spinal disk, was forced to put his entire life on hold. For five years after his return from Iraq, 29 year old Curtis has not been able to hold a job or even perform simple everyday tasks due to his spinal disk injury. He can’t get out of bed some days and can’t stand for longer than an hour, forcing him to rely on his girlfriend, Tonya for essentially everything. She works three jobs seven days a week to provide for the two of them. Shanley explains, “And me being a man growing up the way I did, I was taught a man provides. I sit here, and I can’t do anything. And everything revolves around it. If I want to go to the grocery store or anything I have to bring someone with me, it’s hard for me to get dressed in the mornings. My girlfriend has to shower with me and wash my lower body for me because I can’t. It’s degrading to say the least. It has taken what I thought was going to be my future and totally twisted it around” (Glazer, “Abandoned at Home”). For years the Portland, Oregon VA hospital kept telling Shanley that nothing was seriously wrong with his back. Eventually when he saw help from an outside doctor, he found that his problem was much more serious than expected. An MRI found that his spinal disk was almost destroyed leaving his nerves exposed. Shanley took this information back to the VA where doctors then apologized for not diagnosing him correctly. He still had to wait six months for surgery. For the months leading up to the surgery, Shanley’s pain only got worse and he could not get in contact with anyone from the VA over the phone. “The government released an audit of the Nation’s Veterans Affairs Healthcare Facilities revealing that Curtis Shanley’s story is far from unique. According to the audit, more than 57,000 newly returned veterans waited more than 90 days for care. And nearly 64,000 others had sought appointments but never got them” (Glazer, “Abandoned at Home”). Shanley expresses, “I just want what is owed to me. I’m a young man, I’m capable of working. Just make me so where I can work, and I’ll leave you alone. Just fix me so I can get back on with my life. That’s all I want” (Glazer, “Abandoned at Home”). 

Congress passed a bill in December 2015 forcing the Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs to study long term mental health issues in veterans after war. As the issue of veteran suicide increases, these studies are researching the mental health of veterans deployed and not deployed. The bill was passed in hopes to prevent suicide rates and aid those who have mental health issues. The new amendment was created by Senator Michael Bennet, member of the Veterans Affairs and Democrat of Colorado. Bennet’s belief is that more research needs to be done on this issue before any of these veterans will receive the aid that they need. It is now 2017 though and not much more has been done by the government to continue helping aid these people. Let alone has any major research been done. This action taken by Congress was a step in the right direction, but was not a big enough one. These veterans are not being able to contribute to society because they are being held back by their injuries, mental or physical.

It has been said that the VA hospitals getting behind on appointments and being overfilled with patients could actually be the veterans’ faults themselves. “It is no secret that veterans hear from their peers, leaders, and special interest groups to file claims for injuries that don’t exist to grow their disability payments with easy, illegitimate add-ons,” (Davey, “Why Veterans Share Responsibility”). Veterans making appointments to convince doctors they have a little bit of PTSD, or that they have a stiff back to increase their disability payments each month is what makes the hospital get so behind on caring for those with real problems. 

To know if this is a real issue would involve considering each and every patient and assessing if their problems are or are not present. This is already the protocol for every hospital. These veterans, whether they think they are tricking the doctors or not, have to be diagnosed with the issues that they come in saying they experience. If the doctors are diagnosing the patients correctly like they should be, they will catch the wrong doing of these men and women and discourage the actions they are taking. The veterans abusing the VA hospitals and what it is put in place for should not hinder the veterans that need real attention and care. The VA should already be aware of the fact that veterans outnumber doctors and specialists and should be expanding to help this issue. The waitlists are far too long and the small number of appointments that can be made is not acceptable for these people.

Our veterans are dying, and the U.S. government is doing the minimum to stop it. These glorified men and women are only glorified on tv, in movies, and on social media. They are heroes, but are not getting treated like heroes in the place that they call home. They are being deployed to fight for our freedom, just to return home to be neglected and rejected from the care that they deserve. They are being put on wait lists, being ignored, being dismissed even by national Veterans Affairs hospitals. Some are being forced to live on the streets because they are unable to hold jobs, and some even feel that death is the only way out of the overlooked pain that they experience. These men and women deserve much more than what is being given to them now and the government is doing almost nothing to make sure that happens. The only thing that can be done is to not ignore these issues and to fight for the justice that these men and women deserve. It must be made clear to the government that these problems are important, and persistent, and will continue until there are no veterans left. They will eventually all be on the streets or dead. 
