Homeless Veterans? Something's Wrong With That Phrase

Homeless Veterans? Something's Wrong With That Phrase
Susan Campbell

November 11, 2009


There it was, anchoring the tail end of Hartford's Veterans Day parade — a homeless-veterans float.

What do you say to that?

As the float rolled along the parade route — a flatbed truck decorated with benches, American flags, high-tech sleeping bags, and two orange buckets of candy to throw — parade-goers looked a little stunned before they burst into cheers.

It was a stark reminder of the men and women we're leaving behind. The Department of Veterans Affairs says there are roughly 131,000 homeless veterans in the U.S. About 5,000 of those are in Connecticut, says the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. Overall, homeless veterans make up about a quarter of the homeless population.

Yes, there are female homeless vets out there. The staff at the Hartford homeless shelter South Park Inn just helped one. The woman served two tours in Iraq, and came home with serious post-traumatic stress disorder. She was sleeping on her mother's couch with her 4-year-old.

"And what's coming?" asks Brian Baker, the tireless assistant director at South Park. How are we going to help the veterans churned out by our current wars? South Park has 10 beds set aside for veterans, and already, those beds are always full. The Hartford shelter's veterans' drop-in center, which opened a year and a half ago, has had 500 visits.

Those numbers don't begin to count the veterans — like the young woman — who couch-surf, or bounce from family member to friend, bumming a corner. Nor does that count the hard-cores, the homeless veterans who hide under the bridges and refuse all efforts to be brought inside for services.
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Homeless Veterans

Homeless Veterans Everyday

Posted to Great Americans by NamGuardianAngel on September 10, 2009

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Veterans' mental health a priority yesterday, today and tomorrow

It would be hard to imagine anyone wanting the job General Shinseki has when so many veterans need action now. The Obama Administration is not just trying to take care of the combat veterans and wounded soldiers from this year, they have to try to take care of all of those who came before, waited longer, hurt longer and felt abandoned by the country since they returned home in need of help.

Shinseki: Veterans' Mental Health a Priority
Posted by Daniel Carty

Eric Shinseki, the retired four-star general who currently heads the Department of Veterans Affairs, said his agency is "working diligently" to better aid veterans suffering from post traumatic stress disorder and other mental health issues.

Shinseki appeared on CBS' "The Early Show" Wednesday, a day after attending a memorial for the 13 victims of the Fort Hood shooting rampage. As a former Army chief of staff, Shinseki described the attack as a "heart wrenching, terrible tragedy - unexplainable."

He also said President Barack Obama's speech during the ceremony was important to "bring the community together and begin the healing."
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Veterans' Mental Health a Priority

Usually I complain about what they lack. It's habit. After all these years of reading their stories, talking to them and their families, it would be impossible to not complain about what they are not getting. These are not, as some put it, freeloaders looking for a handout, but men and women who earned whatever it is we can provide them with. We'll honor them today on Veterans Day, but fail to imagine tomorrow, they will still be veterans living with memories of combat, fallen friends and carrying the same wounds they came home with. They are veterans everyday, every week, every month and every year for as long as they live.

They return to home, families, neighborhoods, to work when they can and the VA claim line when they can't. They return to people they used to feel comfortable with suddenly feeling like a stranger in their midst. They hear us complain about tiny issues as if they were all so important while they remember what it was like when the food couldn't get to them for days, the times when they were fighting too stressed out to realize they hadn't eaten all day or slept, or showered or that it was over a hundred degrees in the shade. Still they listen to us get all flustered because they didn't take out the trash or notice the new curtains in the living room.

In the weeks, months and years as they try to readjust back to the world of normalcy, they soon realize everyone else has gotten on with their normal lives but they haven't. There is nothing "normal" about them anymore. What they do not understand is that after what they went through, they are normal considering where they came from.

This is one of the first videos I did on PTSD so that families could understand.

Wounded Minds, PTSD

Posted to Great Americans by NamGuardianAngel on September 19, 2009

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What is possible with PTSD is that they can heal this wound. It does not have to be fatal. It does not have to be all consuming. It does not have to be a terrorist inside of them trying to break them down and destroy their lives. If they know what it is, that knowledge acts like an antibiotic. Much like an infection will eat away flesh, PTSD with eat away at the soul unless it is treated. As soon as they start to talk about what is going on inside of them, they stop getting worse. PTSD is no longer able to rule over their lives. They begin to take control over it.

It is not their fault. It strikes the compassionate. Once they understand this, they stop the self-guilt road rage against themselves.

It is not something they can treat with alcohol or drugs because it makes it all worse. Masking what is there instead of treating it properly allows it to fester and grow stronger. If they are already on medication, it is dangerous because these chemicals interfere with the chemicals in the medications that are supposed to be helping them. Once they understand this, the medications begin to work and if not, the doctors can change them so they work with the individual body chemistry better.

They do not have to watch their family fall apart if everyone involved knows where all the emotions are coming from and what they can do about them. If they have the tools to readjust their thinking, they will know what a good response is and what a bad one is. In other words, they can either make the situation worse or better and help the veteran heal. They can only do this with knowledge as the tool for their survival.

They can laugh again. They can find the part of themselves where joy still lives on trapped behind the wall their body built to defend against more pain.

They can reclaim their faith. Once they understand what PTSD is, answer the age old question of "why me" when others walked away, then they understand themselves better. They can stop blaming themselves. They can stop thinking God is punishing them or abandoned them. Above all they can stop thinking God is evil because He allowed what they saw.

There is so much that is possible with PTSD and they can come out on the other side better than they were before while they can never come out the same way they were before. Every event in a human's life goes into what they become and each one of us adjust to events that shape our lives.

So here's another video. Veterans Everyday just to honor them for all they live with long after we stopped praying for them and felt we no longer had to worry about them.

Veterans Day Memories of Vietnam

Posted to Great Americans by NamGuardianAngel on September 12, 2009

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Army strain, recovery at Fort Lewis

King: Army strain, recovery at Fort Lewis
By John King, CNN Chief National Correspondent
November 10, 2009 8:38 p.m. EST

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
CNN's John King travels to Fort Lewis, Washington
Soldiers are dealing not only with physical injuries but with ones harder to detect
Two-thirds of the troops stationed at Fort Lewis are now in Iraq or Afghanistan
"State of the Union" with John King airs at 9 a.m. ET Sunday
Fort Lewis, Washington (CNN) -- The pain is excruciating, but to Army Spc. Michael Ballard, pain is the price of progress.

"I broke the top of my femur, so with the plate and screws, now I'm actually, two months later, able to walk -- do some walking on my own," Ballard told us. "Physical therapy is coming along very well."

Once the hip is back to full strength, Ballard will need knee surgery to repair ligament damage, but he shrugs and voices encouragement at his progress and smiles a confident smile when asked about his ultimate goal.

"Get back and fight," Ballard said without hesitation. "Return to duty."

Veterans Day traditionally has been set aside more to honor those who have served rather than those still serving. But eight-plus years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq have created a huge class of combat veterans who still wear the uniform, many of them with two or three or more deployments under their belts and perhaps more in their futures.
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Army strain, recovery at Fort Lewis

Fort Hood suicidal soldiers slipped through the cracks

This is what I've been talking about. There have not been enough people to take care of the need at Fort Hood or any other base. There are not enough deployed with the troops either and if Major Hasan is any indication of the kind of care some have been getting, the problem is a lot worse than many would ever suspect.

This is what I've been hearing when I get the emails flying in from frantic family members not knowing what to do. This is what I've been hearing when I get the phone calls from veterans who were never properly taken care of. What I tell them is not rocket science. It's what they need to hear. What I hear from them has had me terrified for years and it's getting worse. People like me are not paid attention to because we have no money, no clout, no advertising budgets and as for all the organization springing up as charities, most of them I can't get a straight answer out of what they have in place to take care of the need. They say they have people there for the soldiers and veterans to talk to but they can't answer how experienced these listeners are, what they know, how they were trained and they can't tell me if any of these helpers are even monitored. Wanting to help is one thing but are they actually helping or hurting?

If they think they have a problem at Fort Hood they need a lot more help with, they are not even close and frankly I'm sickened by being proven right so often while they are paying the price for how much others keep getting wrong. We need an immediate influx of trained trauma responders today, not when the military decides they can find later. We need them out in the communities to help the National Guards and we need them to be trained on PTSD as well as trauma and not just mental illness in general. PTSD comes only after trauma so it is absurd to have doctors not fully trained on trauma and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

If they are like Hasan, then you'll need a calculator to figure out where this is going because you'll have to factor in the normal rate of PTSD, one out of three, multiply that by 50% for each redeployment and then factor in the scale of PTSD ranging from mild to full blown but then you'll also have to factor in the family members living with untreated PTSD because they'll end up with secondary PTSD from all the turmoil in the house. Wonder if they are thinking of any of this especially when the troops at Fort Hood have just had their last sanctuary attacked leaving them with no safe place in their mind.

Soldiers' mental health comes under scrutiny
Ft. Hood has had 10 soldier suicides this year, the second-highest of any Army post. Families of troops who have committed suicide say troubled soldiers are slipping through the cracks.

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske

November 10, 2009 1:30 p.m.


Sgt. Justin "Jon" Garza joined the Army eight years ago at age 20. When he arrived at Ft. Hood in June, the communications specialist had deployed six times to Europe and the Middle East, including two bloody stints in Iraq, and was due to return in September. He had broken up with his girlfriend, developed a drinking problem and gone AWOL.

While he was AWOL, Garza threatened to kill himself with a shotgun. Military personnel took him to Ft. Hood's Darnall Army Medical Center.

Psychiatrists there diagnosed him with an adjustment disorder and depression and sent him home with his best friend, a fellow soldier. He was put on a Monday-through-Friday suicide watch. Eleven days later, on July 11 -- a Saturday -- Garza was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot to the head.

It was the eighth anniversary of his enlistment.

"I've been a wreck and in pain for a long time. I could not take it anymore," Garza wrote in a suicide note left for his mother. "I was never good at opening up and letting things out, so things just festered and got worse."

With the shooting rampage at Ft. Hood last week drawing attention to the mental state of America's troops, the families of soldiers who have returned from combat with significant mental health issues believe the public may be ready to listen to their stories.

"My son slipped through the cracks," said Garza's mother, Teri Smith, 52.

Army records show that 117 active-duty soldiers have committed suicide so far this year, including 10 at Ft. Hood, the second-highest number of any Army base (Ft. Campbell in Kentucky had 14 soldier suicides). Ft. Hood has had 76 soldier suicides since 2003, according to Army records, but it is also the largest base in the country, home to about 50,000 soldiers.

Two weeks after Garza's death, Ft. Hood's commander, Lt. Gen. Rick Lynch, told Congress that he needed more mental health staff.

"That's the biggest frustration," Lynch told a House subcommittee. "I'm short about 44 [personnel] of what I am convinced I need at Fort Hood that I just don't have."
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Soldiers mental health comes under scrutiny

Ex-Marine who survived three tours in Iraq is slain while installing cable TV

Three tours in Iraq but this Marine was killed in his own home. How do we make sense out of this? How do we make sense out of what happened at Fort Hood? How do we make sense out of anything that happens to any of these men and women when they are supposed to be out of danger and safe back home?

Ex-Marine who survived three tours in Iraq is slain while installing cable TV in Victorville
November 10, 2009 4:23 pm
A former U.S. Marine who survived several tours of duty in Iraq and a knife attack at his Phelan home a few months ago was violently beaten to death with a hammer while installing cable at a Victorville home, authorities said. A relative of the homeowners has been arrested in the attack.

Trevor Neiman, 25, a Charter Communications Cable installer, was found beaten and bloody by San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies who responded to the home shortly after 4:30 p.m. Monday.

While Neiman was working on the cable at the home in the 15200 block of San Jose Drive, a man attacked and repeatedly beat him with a small hammer, authorities said.


"He was doing a cable installation. There was no exchange of words. There was nothing that occurred before the unprovoked attack," said Jody Miller, a San Bernardino County sheriff’s spokeswoman.

Miller said witnesses told investigators there was no indication of what set off the attack. Paramedics rushed Neiman to Victor Valley Community Hospital, where he died of his injuries.

After the attack, investigators say, the suspect fled the home.
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Ex-Marine who survived three tours in Iraq is slain

We can't. We can't make sense out of anything people do to them any more than we can make sense out of what they do not do for them. We manage pretty well at saying slogans like "support the troops" and tomorrow as the day we honor our veterans is supposed to be foremost in our thoughts and prayers, the truth is, for the vast majority of the people in this country, it will just be another day like any other. For them, it will be a day to remember friends they lost and some they gained. It will also be a day of remembering how they were transformed from being a citizen into being a member of the armed forces. A minority in this country soon forgotten after their uniforms are taken off and their weapons turned in. They return to their families and friends, neighbors, all the people they once thought they knew well, suddenly finding out they can no longer talk to them the same way they did before.

They became veterans and it is a title they will carry for the rest of their lives. The same lives they risked for the sake of everyone else in the country. They same lives they laid on the line. The same lives we were willing to sacrifice for our own freedom, our own needs and our own prosperity.

With WWII it was all about revenge for the most part for Pearl Harbor. Then it was about stopping the communists from taking over South Korea. We then decided their lives were worth risking to stop the communists from taking over Vietnam. Again we decided to send them for the sake of Kuwait just as we sent them into Somalia and other nations with lesser numbers. We sent them into Afghanistan for retaliation of the attacks on that clear September morning in 2001 and then we sent them into Iraq for reasons we are still not clear about but the fact remains, they are still in Afghanistan and Iraq, still risking their lives and still coming home to an absent nation.

Trevor Neiman, 25 served three tours but aside from his family and friends, we will not really remember his name. The list of those we honored and remembered from Fort Hood today will soon be forgotten just as the numbers of the wounded will fade from memory. We will focus on the trial to come remembering the name of the Major who betrayed his soldiers and slaughtered them while they were unarmed. They had no way of defending themselves and Hasan took full advantage of this. We however manage to betray them as well when we do not really value them. We do not take care of them and accept substandard care for the wounded. We do not honor them when we make no plans ahead of time to take care of their needs and then find even more excuses for why the problems they have to face go on. When they become homeless we blame them instead of ourselves for not taking care of them and making sure they can make a living to pay their bills. We don't make sure their families stop living in a bubble and open their eyes to what wounds they may not be able to see and God forbid we manage to make sure communities are ready for the National Guards coming back into the community in any kind of need.

Tomorrow I hope to focus on what is being done for them but above all, focus on them even more than usual. Tomorrow is Veterans day but for them it is everyday they are a veteran and we need to remember this. Keep in mind with two campaigns going on, PTSD all over the news, you'd think the rest of us would care enough to stay informed, but we don't. That's really sad.