#silence-among-veterans

#silence-among-veterans

Nearly 90 percent of suicide attempts among high school students are attributable to ACEs, as are 80 percent of adult suicides, translating to 109 suicides per day.

"When we started to look for resources for our family, they weren't there, they were extremely hard to find or too expensive," Morris said.

Hibuki, the stuffed animal dog, allows children to project their feelings, helping them to express emotions like sadness and anxiety. The child becomes the caretaker of the dog, which facilitates self-soothing.

We Americans who will protect our flag should have a voice in where it is flown. Despite his unimpeachable record of heroism and patriotism, he was disparaged and mocked by his government and the corporate press.

With millions of soldiers estimated to be suffering from trauma-related conditions, not to mention civilians, Ukraine faces an urgent question: How will it treat the lasting mental scars of war? Among the emerging possibilities is psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) in treatment of war-related trauma, a controversial yet increasingly researched approach that some experts believe could play a transformative role in veteran mental health care.

That's a $9,000 raise, essentially. Sell the car and use that cash to get a functional car. If you can sell it, get that $5,000 in your hand plus this $9,000 and buy you a $15,000 paid-for car, that's a nice car. And now you got no car payments.

AI will be capable of further automating tasks such as document intake, classification, and preliminary adjudication, making it more feasible than ever for VA to deliver benefits in 'minutes not months.'

I did not have the experience that I hear many of my fellow community members did. I wasn't distraught about it, I wasn't timid about it. It wasn't gloom and doom for me because I was educated.

The research shows that for many who are diagnosed with PTSD, the condition arises not from what was done to us but what we did—or what we failed to prevent. This mechanism, known as moral injury, can be sympathetic ('I couldn't save them') but is often not sympathetic at all ('I killed them'). For people carrying this factor in PTSD, the task of integration, of sitting with and holding what we've done, is far more challenging.

During the troop surge in Iraq, I learned to constantly scan for threats, how to distinguish the sharp crack of a gunshot pointed in my direction from one outgoing toward an enemy, and the myriad ways that explosives can be hidden on a roadside. I learned that hypervigilance can be the difference between life and death. What I didn't learn was how to turn it off. Now, I take three psychiatric medications every day, and I go to therapy every week.

What we like to say is, 'Where would you like to go today?' You get to leave the walls of the nursing home. We can link six units together, so we can do a trip together ... We can go down the streets of Paris, France.

The Marines are a 24-hour responsibility. Once you commit, your personal ambitions take a backseat. Eventually, I reached a point where I wanted to explore those ambitions - specifically, entrepreneurship - while I was still young enough to act on them. I made the decision to leave the service during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic - even though the civilian job market felt uncertain, and many encouraged me to stay. But retired service members who had built businesses offered a different message. They helped me realize that the military equips people with more transferable skills than they often think. The transition resources on base reinforced that point, so I felt ready to move on.

To our fellow officers and first responders: you are never alone, and reaching out for help is a sign of strength.

Though the 83-year-old (who will turn 84 in two weeks) is rarely spotted in the Capitol these days, his vocal opposition to President Donald Trump on a myriad of issues is louder and more present than ever when deemed useful for the motivated liberal press. For instance, McConnell was quoted far and wide last month after he criticized Trump's desire to acquire Greenland, a move the Kentuckian suggested would "incinerate" the threadbare alliance that remains between the United States and NATO.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has rectified issues with its new electronic health record system and is all set to resume software deployments in just a few months, VA Secretary Doug Collins assured lawmakers on Wednesday, despite a host of unresolved recommendations from an agency watchdog on how to streamline the project. VA is preparing to restart rollouts of its new Oracle Health EHR system on April 1, following an operational pause in April 2023 that froze go-lives at most of the agency's medical facilities.

"bring together youth of every race, religion, gender, ethnic background, and economic status in programs to develop character, citizenship, and fitness." "It is the philosophy of Scouting to welcome all eligible youth ... who are willing to accept Scouting's values and meet any other requirements of membership," the organization says on its website. "Prejudice, intolerance and unlawful discrimination are unacceptable within the ranks of Scouting America."

For many veterans, returning home marks not resolution but the beginning of a quieter struggle. Despite decades of innovation in trauma-focused therapies and medication, a substantial number continue to live with psychological injuries that existing treatments only partly address. Their trauma is not merely a cluster of symptoms; it is a disruption of identity, moral coherence, and belonging. It reflects lived experience often shaped by early adversity, military culture, and the potentially socially isolating aftermath of service.

Walk through an airport bookstore, scroll the podcast charts, or listen to a leadership keynote, and you'll likely find lessons on boundaries and burnout. Celebrities talk about therapy with a casualness that would have been unthinkable a generation ago. Coaches tell C-suite executives to " lead with vulnerability." And bestselling books like The Gifts of Imperfection, You Should Talk to Someone, and The Body Keeps the Score have given the world a common vocabulary for talking about anxiety, shame, and trauma.

Has this happened to you? You run into someone, and they ask about something that you shared with them that was painful. They start talking about it, and there you go, hurting again? You weren't thinking about it, and the next thing you know, it hurts like it just happened. There are occasions - holidays and family gatherings - where the effects of a past painful experience will reemerge and trigger emotional pain all over again.