U.S. war veterans suffer mentally and physically for our nation every day, on the battlefield and in their own homes after deployment. Coming home and returning to civilian life can be just as challenging as risking their lives while fighting on enemy soil. “Approximately 15% of the military personnel who have returned from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will experience significant post-traumatic 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” (Ruzek et al., page 3). “The seven most common health conditions confronting veterans include musculoskeletal injuries and pain, mental health issues, chemical exposure, infectious diseases, noise and vibration exposure, traumatic brain injury, urological injuries” (Salamon). The issue of how to aid those struggling with mental illnesses, suicide, homelessness, and unemployment rates among the U.S. Armed Forces is an ongoing controversial topic in our country today. Something must be done to better help our country’s veterans as they experience very life altering illnesses such as post-traumatic stress disorder and physical injuries.

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 post-traumatic stress disorder veterans” ("Suicide Attempts among Offspring of PTSD Veterans”).  “Karney and colleagues 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 relationship 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. This is concerning to future generations as this can affect how these children are raised and contribute to society and to their future children themselves. The influence of paternal war-related PTSD on offspring behavior is potentially complex, reflecting both heredity 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). Suicide seems to follow a stereotype that only youth and mentally ill or challenged people contemplate, but this stereotype is false. Thousands of our most brave men and women struggle with suicidal thoughts every day. “About 11% of the adult homeless population are veterans” (National Coalition for Homeless Veterans). “6.9% of American veterans are jobless” (Plumer). This is higher than that national unemployment rate which is 4%. 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, counseling, 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., pg. 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” (Vythilingam et al., pg. 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). Not to mention what leaving a physical injury untreated can cause. Leaving anything untreated can only cause complications in the long run, physical or mental. 

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. It’s not only mental illnesses like PTSD that go untreated at the V.A. hospitals. 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 V.A. 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 V.A. 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”). It’s devastating for men and women to feel helpless and abandoned when coming back to this country. Some being forced to rely on others to do everything for them due to their injuries or illnesses. These men and women are the toughest and bravest people in our country, traveling across the world to fight for our freedom. Then, they return home and feel like they can’t contribute to their families or even to society because of the visible or invisible struggles that face every day.  

Deployed men and women experience many unimaginable things while fighting for our country. One of these things being MST or Military Sexual Trauma. Sexual trauma and sexual harassment does not discriminate and can happen to anyone anywhere. “About one in four women who use V.A. care have experienced MST but, almost half of all veterans in V.A. care have experienced MST are men” (“About Military Sexual Trauma”). The way people react to sexual trauma is different and can be difficult to talk about or even difficult to admit happened. Sexual trauma can even cause post-traumatic stress disorder. “36% of 4,008 US women interviewed experienced PTSD symptoms due to sexual abuse or harassment” (Resnick). Another terrible experience that becomes soldiers’ reality while in combat is not knowing when is going to be their last day. Not knowing if they’ll ever come home to their family, and not knowing which of their buddies were going to get killed that day. Just being on the ground in a third world country you can see children dying, children carrying guns, civilians crying and struggling to live through the madness that is the war around them. While in combat, soldiers can experience many life-threatening events such as explosions and being taken as a POW, or prisoner of war. All of which could cause long term physical injuries or PTSD symptoms, both potentially creating further problems when returning to civilian life. 

“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” (Philips). 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 at all. 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. Improvements within the V.A. hospitals would be the biggest hurdle that could be taken to help our veterans. It may be a long time until the country will see this happen, though. 

It has been said that the V.A. 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). 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 in the United States. 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 V.A. hospitals and what it is put in place for should not hinder the veterans that need real attention and care, which should be obvious to the doctors. The V.A. 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 veterans that deserve the care they need. “V.A. hospitals in North Carolina and Virginia found widespread errors that extremely understated veteran wait times for appointments in 2016, leading the VA inspector general to conclude that VA scheduling data is still unreliable and a “high-risk” area for the agency. A report estimated that as many as 13,800 veterans should have been able to get VA-sponsored care in the private sector because of their long waits, but the VA never added them to lists” (Slack). This is one of the main reasons patients do not get appointment times within the V.A., not because of appointments made to grow disability payments. 

Our veterans are dying, and the U.S. government is doing the minimum to stop it. These 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 homeless because they are unable to work or dead due to suicide or physical injuries.
