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Essay on veterans health issues
Veterans post traumatic stress syndrome and mental illness
Essay on veterans health issues
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As I ponder whom I could possibly interview, my wife suggests, what do you think of interviewing my dad? This immediately appeals to me but there are challenges. He is living in a VA nursing home with early onset dementia. He also has a hard time hearing due to his injuries roughly forty years ago. This would make a phone interview extremely difficult. Instead, I start to formulate a similar idea, what if I interviewed my wife on her experiences as the child of a disabled veteran? I move forward with this idea with a dose of apprehension. I don’t want my wife to relive any pain. During the interview I find just the opposite to happen. Growing up in Plainview, a small town in the Texas panhandle, Beth found the people to be supportive of her family. “Everyone was always supportive of us, in Texas there are a few things we love and our veterans are one of them”. Her Father, Bobby Masters, was injured in the Vietnam War in 1969. “He was a Marine and in his early twenties. One night, just as he laid down to sleep, he was hit by a mortar. They thought that he was dead and put a sheet over him. He started blowing on the sheet to alert people that he in fact was not dead. He was in the hospital for some time …show more content…
She is in the rather unique position to be both a healthcare provider, and also the child of a disabled veteran. She of course would like access to be easier for all of our veterans. There is also the issue that many of these men and women come from a culture of dealing with problems on their own. Bobby once broke his ribs. Try as they did, nobody could get him to go the doctor. “Now that he is getting older and dealing with Alzheimer’s he does have to go more often. I feel since he is considered 100% disabled it has maybe been easier for him to get help he needs. Also, my mom is one to stay on top of the VA and make sure things get
Today’s veterans often come home to find that although they are willing to die for their country, they’re not sure how to live for it. It’s hard to know how to live for a country that regularity tears itself apart along every possible ethnic and demographic boundary… In combat, soldiers all but ignore differences of race, religion,and politics within their platoon. It’s no wonder they get so depressed when they come home. (Junger
It’s hard for civilians to see what veterans had to face and still do even after all is said and done. The rhetorical strategies that contribute to Grady’s success in this article is appealing to the reader’s emotions through the story of Jason Poole. Denise Grady’s “Struggling Back From War’s Once Deadly Wounds” acts as an admonition for the American public and government to find a better way to assist troops to land on their feet post-war. Grady informs the reader on the recent problems risen through advancements in medical technology and how it affected the futures of all the troops sent into the Iraq war.
...of the struggle over how the war would be remembered. Blanketed by the discourse of disability, the struggle over the memory of veterans and the country alike would be waged with such obliquity as to surpass even the most veiled operations of Nixon’s minions. While Nixon’s plumbers were wrenching together the Gainesville case against VVAW in the spring of 1972, mental health and news-media professionals were cobbling together the figure of the mentally incapacitated Vietnam veteran. More than any other, this image is the one that would stick in the minds of the American people. The psychologically damaged veteran raised a question that demanded an answer: what happened to our boys that was so traumatic that they were never the same again? As it came to be told, the story of what happened to them had less to do with the war itself than with the war against the war.
I can only stress the importance of this topic so much. I can keep going on about how important it is to do something, but that won’t get us the change we need. We need society, the government, and especially the Department of Veteran affairs to work together. This will be an issue that will be going and going for years to come. But I do believe that there is something that can be done to improve this issue.
“Factors Affecting Health Care” (50-55) Demonstrates the sacrifices and how difficult it is for veterans to receive healthcare from the Department of Veteran Affairs.
“In September 2005”, Van Dahlen created a nonprofit organization called Give an Hour, where she and other highly skilled psychologists work together for the common goal of providing free mental health care to military personnel and their loved ones (“About Us”). Slowly but surely, Van Dahlen has created this organization that has produced “volunteers capable of responding to both acute and chronic conditions” and she has had the honor and privilege to forever change the lives of our country’s protectors for the better (“Mission Statement”). Growing up, a young Barbara Van Dahlen always had an immense respect for our military, as the daughter of an injured World War II veteran. Occasionally, she would hear her father reminiscing about his days in the service and all of the battles and training that he participated in. However, she recalls that he would often excise the da...
When civilians look at the men and women in the military, they think of strength, courage, and freedom. When those same men and women get out, civilians should treat them with respect, honor, and dignity. In their own minds however, it may be a different story. A loss of strength, a lack of courage, and a never-ending battle within that keeps them all but free. In the music video “Wrong Side of Heaven”, FFDP successfully argues that homeless veterans and veterans with PTSD need assistance. Through the use of visual aspects, literary devices, and symbolism, FFDP shows that their music video holds a strong argument.
As men and women serve this country we often forget the importance of what they did and how we give back to them for what they have experienced. Through student surveys that have been gathered, it has been proven in the course of knowledge that 80% of all thirty students surveyed that say they know of someone who is or was a veteran and only 57% of those Veterans receive help. Richelle E. Goodrich stated, “Have you ever stopped to ponder the amount of blood spilt, the volume of tears shed, the degree of pain and anguish endured, the number of noble men a...
Michael Anderson is a homeless veteran. He served in Vietnam from 1968 to 1972. When he came home he turned to drugs and violence as a way to cope with his war-related problems. Michael was sent to jail on domestic violence charges. During his sentence Michael wrote, “Where Broken Soldiers Go.” He is not a famous poet, but when CNN caught wind of his poem, they created an article on his piece. Michael Anderson not only caught the attention of a News station but many veterans and veteran programs reacted to his piece. Michael’s poem intrigued and troubled many. The poem has shown the underscoring troubles homeless veterans face coming home from war. Thus his poem have made many people want to start more veteran programs, or donate to the already
Envision a man that sat on a grimy concrete block, as nightfall began to crystallize before his eyes. His hair, charcoal-grey, was matted and straggly, as if he had ever known the pleasure of a hot shower or comb except when he was in the war. His once shimmering brown eyes were know hollow and cold. His eyes, that were once filled with the upmost blissfulness, now sagged like the bulky bags underneath his eyes, consumed by the loneliness and despair he felt for himself, for his lack of purpose in life. This man did not bare a smile, only crinkles where one used to be. He wore his only faded blue jacket with a tan shirt tucked underneath it. He wore cruddy worn out jeans that barely seized his thin waist and boney legs. His only pair of shoes that were once white, we're now grungy. His finger nails were bitten and dirty. This man, like many other homeless veterans, struggle everyday of their lives.
Tim O’Brien served in the Vietnam War, and his short story “The Things They Carried” presents the effects of the war on its young soldiers. The treatment of veterans after their return also affects them. The Vietnam War was different from other wars, because too many in the U.S. the soldiers did not return as heroes but as cruel, wicked, and drug addicted men. The public directs its distaste towards the war at the soldiers, as if they are to blame. The also Veterans had little support from the government who pulled them away from their families to fight through the draft. Some men were not able to receive the help they needed because the symptoms of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) did not show until a year
...ust deal with similar pains. Through the authors of these stories, we gain a better sense of what soldiers go through and the connection war has on the psyche of these men. While it is true, and known, that the Vietnam War was bloody and many soldiers died in vain, it is often forgotten what occurred to those who returned home. We overlook what became of those men and of the pain they, and their families, were left coping with. Some were left with physical scars, a constant reminder of a horrible time in their lives, while some were left with emotional, and mental, scarring. The universal fact found in all soldiers is the dramatic transformation they all undergo. No longer do any of these men have a chance to create their own identity, or continue with the aspirations they once held as young men. They become, and will forever be, soldiers of the Vietnam War.
Veteran’s healthcare has recently been the subject of much discussion within American political circles. However, most ordinary Americans know little of this burning issue. Although support for veterans has risen to its highest levels compared to other times in American history, veterans need more than support to survive; they ne...
It is understandable that some people may disagree on improvement of veteran care due to simple things like the fact that “veterans were getting addicted….even dying, from over prescription,” when they asked for assistance with their PTSD, but when all things are considered, veterans risked their lives for freedom. People should be able to take the time to take care of those who were willing to give their lives for freedom. Colby Buzzel says “if you want to know what the price of freedom looks like, go to a V.A. waiting room- wheelchairs, missing limbs, walking wounded.” These are all things that veterans have to go through to ensure freedom. And that is added to their struggle of PTSD. So, before people say that veteran care for PTSD does not need improvement, they need to think about whether or not they are willing to pay the same price that these veterans were willing to
The soldiers feel that the only people they can talk to about the war are their “brothers”, the other men who experienced the Vietnam War. The friendship and kinship that grew in the jungles of Vietnam survived and lived on here in the United States. By talking to each other, the soldiers help to sort out the incidents that happened in the War and to put these incidents behind them. “The thing to do, we decided, was to forget the coffee and switch to gin, which improved the mood, and not much later we were laughing at some of the craziness that used to go on” (O’Brien, 29).