POSTER GIRL

FACTS: POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (PTSD)

The following information comes from an October 2011 survey on the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) requested by Senator Patty Murray’s Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs and from the 2011 RAND Report “How is deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan affecting U.S. service members and their families?”

·      18 veterans commit suicide every day.

·      Three times as many veterans are dying soon after returning home than those being killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined.

·      In 2010, the VA treated more than 1.2 million veterans for mental health problems of which 408,000 were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

·      It can take a veteran 3-6 months to get an appointment with the VA and even longer to receive treatment.

·      The VA’s own research shows that, of the nearly 50,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan with new post-traumatic stress disorder diagnoses, fewer than 10 percent received recommended mental health treatment, and 20 percent of those veterans did not have a single mental health follow-up visit in the first year after diagnosis.

·      Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are 75 percent more likely to die in car crashes than comparable civilians

·      Rates of vehicular mayhem (including drunk driving and vehicular manslaughter) have doubled

·      Sex crimes by active duty soldiers have tripled since 2003

·      By 2008, more than 2 million American children have coped with a parent going to these wars

·      As many as one half million of those children may have become clinically depressed

·      Unemployment rates have been two percentage points higher among war veterans than civilians

·      The military has increasingly off-loaded the burden of care for service members’ health onto their families, and mainly onto women

·      The Army’s use of the determination that a soldier has a “pre-existing condition” has saved it over $12.5 billion. 

RESOURCES FOR VETERANS

Veterans Suicide Prevention Hotline 1-800-273-TALK

National Call Center for Homeless Veterans 877-4AID-VET (424-3838)

Vet Center Combat Call Center 877-WAR-VETS

VA CLAIM BENEFITS ASSISTANCE

Bill Perry, Service Officer, Disabled American Veteran CSO

Tel: 215-945-1269 or 215-945-3350 Em: bpvetforpeace@aol.com

Wounded Warrior Project 

877-TEAM-WWP (832-6997) Em: wpservice@woundedwarriorproject.org 

EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES

The Vow to Hire Heroes Act of 2011 (President Obama signed into law in November 2011)