HOMELESS VETERANS AND FUTURE HOMELESS VETERANS BEING IGNORED IN RECENT U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN
By Kevin A. Stoda
As America faces the 2008 Presidential elections next Tuesday, the issue of homeless war veterans in America is often ignored. This is why it is more than appropriate that BBC has decided this October 29, 2008 to begin a multipart program on America's 150,000 homeless veterans-homeless from recent and ancient wars.
Neither Bush, Obama nor McCain are currently trying to seriously disentangle the U.S immediately from creating more troubled vets by demanding an end to U.S. wars in the furthest corners of the planet. (Obama seems to be supporting Bush's policy in Afghanistan-as does McCain.)
You can download BBC's THE HOMELESS VETERANS here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/w0bv6mt7
or at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/documentaries/2008/09/081027_lostveterans_doc.shtml
The BBC's THE HOMELESS VETERANS is a fairly multicultural presentation--with veterans from many different cultural backgrounds and experiencing a great variety of stages of PTSD involved in dissecting the issues that returning veterans face.
http://www.mentalhealth.va.gov/ptsd/alert.asp
In 2006 an internal report for the DOD admitted that the VA was overwhelmed because such a high number of veterans were coming home from the Gulf and Afghanistan with PTSD and other problems from war experience.
That is, these soldiers were obviously victims of a traditional military hostility to recognizing the PTSD issues and their enormity for decades.
The National Institute on Mental Health (NIMH) define Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) as: "Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, is an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened. Traumatic events that may trigger PTSD include violent personal assaults, natural or human-caused disasters, accidents, or military combat."
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/index.shtml
One speaker on the BBC program on veterans stated that far-too-many Vietnam veterans had historically been so disappointed with the VA that they had often simply walked away in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s-and not necessarily to homes.
Although there has been some improvement recently in the speed in which claims are handled, compensation for war veterans returning back to the US continues to take much longer than most other types of claims for assistance through the VA (Veterans Administration). http://www1.va.gov/Homeless/
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