Military service being far rarer than it was in the days of the draft, more than 91% of the nation’s 22 million veterans are at least 35 years old, and the overwhelming majority did not serve in the post-9/11 era.Ībout 72% of veterans are at least 50. The VA researchers used death records from 21 states to come up with a 2010 national estimate for veterans of all ages. As shocking as that number is, the real number may actually be higher. That’s 22 suicides a day, a suicide every 65 minutes. This is where PTSD stigma has gotten our Veterans!Įvery single day, 22 veterans take their own lives. When we teach employers and the public to understand and accept PTSD as a treatable condition, we are helping our veterans slowly break free from this stigma. Our veterans and their families aren’t the only ones who need to understand what it means to live with this condition employers and other civilians are a big piece of the puzzle. One way to decrease these ill feelings toward PTSD, a condition affecting nearly one-third of our troops is to ramp up public education efforts. It’s time for stigma to stop trumping our veterans’ strengths and virtue. Seeking help should be seen as honorable, courageous and an important step in taking care of one’s health but because of the stigma surrounding PTSD, a veteran wears a scarlet letter as soon as he or she divulges any PTSD symptoms. Our veterans still face dire jobless rates, and often turn to addiction or self-harm when they have nowhere else to go for help. NYPD then disqualified him from serving on the force.Īlthough it’s understandable for a police department to require mental health screenings for officers who may have to use deadly force, that doesn’t change the fact that our veterans are in a devastating double bind. When he developed PTSD from the fighting and admitted it to the military, they shared that information with the police department. One veteran said he passed the NYPD entrance exam in 2006, before his tour overseas.
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