She became an advocate for veterans’ mental health after her son returned home from Iraq with post traumatic stress disorder. The Veterans Administration reported that 317,000 veterans were treated for PTSD at VA medical centers and clinics in 2005.
Now back to this incredible woman. It took a mother's love to do this and she is doing what the government should have been doing all along but they just didn't care enough.
Mother raises funds for veterans center
James Coburn
The Edmond Sun
EDMOND — The joy troops feel when returning home from war is too often replaced by depression, anxiety, family problems, even sometimes post traumatic stress disorder as days turn to months.
A new Pentagon study reveals that nearly one-third of 88,000 veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq confront mental health problems. The study is reported in the November issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The suicide rate in the Army has reached its highest level in 26 years, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
The reintegration time that the Department of Defense provides for troops coming home is between 96 hours to five days, said Cindy Collins-Clark of Edmond, founder of Veterans’ Families United Foundation.
Clark founded the organization in 2006 to provide compassionate, holistic resources to encourage healing from combat trauma and a healthy transition from military service to civilian life.
The 2006 Oklahoma Mother of the Year and licensed mental health counselor long has contended that the readjustment period for military men and women returning from war needs to be longer.
Clark has proposed a Readjustment Facility and Family Annex for Veterans to help reduce the severity of mental illness. She said the project is considered by the Department of Defense as too expensive to be part of the overall military process. So she’s trying to raise $1.5 million of private funding for a center for veterans and their family members. So far, nobody has responded to her proposals.
“A readjustment period theoretically could reduce the severity of mental illness, of violence in homes, of incarcerated veterans — the total cost to our government,” Clark said.
Clark has three degrees to her credit, two of which are master’s degrees in education and counseling from the University of Central Oklahoma. She became a professional counselor in 2000.
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http://www.edmondsun.com/local/local_story_348121434.html
