On an average day, 22 United States veterans commit suicide, resulting in more lives lost than the combined military missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Air Force veteran Kevin Steele, a resident of Eufaula, Oklahoma, learned of this sobering statistic when a young veteran he knew killed himself after returning home from deployment. The loss devastated Steele, so to raise money for veteran suicide prevention, he decided to hike the Appalachian Trail (a lifelong dream of his) with his son Hunter.
“The one particular kid that I think about, he practically grew up in my house,” Steele told Burt Mummolo of Tulsa’s Channel 8. “If we can do anything to spare any family out there that kind of pain, it’s worth walking 2,200 miles for.”
Kevin and Hunter have named their mission the Hike for Heroes and set a goal to raise $100,000 on their walk, which will take them through 14 states — from Georgia to Maine. They believe that they can meet their target if they find about 5,000 people willing to donate a penny per mile walked — or $22 in memory of those 22 veterans lost every day to suicide. With the funds, the Steeles want to work with the Kentucky-based charity ActiveHeroes to build a retreat center that will provide treatment for veterans suffering from PTSD and other issues.
The duo embarks on March 17. Presumably, every blister they endure will be a reminder that they’re walking to prevent the pain that suicide causes.
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Tag: PTSD
Salute the Non-Profit That Helps Vets Continue to Serve When They Return Home
When she returned to the United States from Iraq, former Army sergeant Rachel Gutierrez struggled with depression and PTSD. Luckily, she found assistance and is now feeling better, thanks to The Mission Continues, a St. Louis-based non-profit organization that mobilizes veterans to help other veterans.
The Mission Continues organizes platoons of veterans and active duty servicemen and women to work together to solve problems in their communities. For example, there’s a Phoenix platoon that focuses on chronic veteran homelessness, while the Washington, D.C. platoon works to fight hunger among children. The Orlando, Florida platoon mentors at-risk youth.
Gutierrez is the leader of the 1st Platoon Phoenix. Tina Rosenberg of the New York Times highlighted a late-night mission Gutierrez led to find veterans sleeping on the street in Phoenix and register them for services last October. The volunteers located 75 veterans, of which 40 agreed to apply for housing. At Christmas, the service platoon follow-up with the vets, visiting their new apartments and bringing holiday gifts.
Former Navy Seal Eric Greitens founded The Mission Continues in 2007, offering vets a stipend in exchange for them spending 20 hours a week on a six-month service mission. Last year, he expanded the organization’s programs to the service platoon model when he realized it could help more people and involve more vets.
Serving with The Mission Continues has had a major impact on Gutierrez’s quality of life. “So many of us have problems with PTSD and such. This makes us realize that regardless of what’s going on, we are strong enough to still serve others and motivate others with our stories and compassion.”
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When Veterans Leave the Service, This College Helps Them Process Their Experience
Cape Fear Community College in Wilmington, N.C. knows all too well how difficult the transition from military to civilian life can be. So last year Dina Greenberg, a teaching assistant at the school, started StoryForce, a writing group for veterans, along with some fellow teachers. And the college has enrolled more than 900 military veterans over the past year alone.
Thomas Rhodes was one of the StoryForce’s early, eager recruits. The Gulf War veteran has been devouring stories and books since he was a kid, but hadn’t considered writing about his war experiences until he joined the group. For the first time he wrote about how his friend Clarence Cash was killed in action 1991. Rhodes wrote about Cash in the story, “Me, Johnny Cash and the Gulf War,” recording memories he’d been suppressing for twenty years. The story concludes with Rhodes’ “Poem for the Fallen Soldier”:
Today I gave my life for a cause
No hesitation, no pause
Today was a good day.
Greenberg has researched the effects of PTSD, and thought writing would be therapeutic for the veterans. “We created a space where people felt comfortable enough to open up and share,” she told Pressley Baird of the Jacksonville Daily News. “It’s low-key. It’s not about course credit; it’s not about feeling like you’ve got an assignment and something that’s due next week. This is a place for you to feel safe. This is a place for you to feel that people are listening.”
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Meet the Marine Who Planted a Special Garden for His Fellow Vets
When San Bernadino, Calif., Vietnam vet Richard Valdez was coordinating a rehabilitation group at the Jerry L. Pettis Memorial Veterans Medical Center, he noticed something that would change his community forever. Therapy sessions would leave many vets intensely stressed, but when they returned a few hours later, a few seemed more relaxed than the others. Valdez asked the veterans what had changed. “They would say, ‘I tended my roses or lemon trees and that calmed me down,'” he told Michel Nolan of The Sun. “So I thought, there are veterans out there who don’t have the chance to do gardening, and maybe we could make it available to them.”
Valdez pursued his vision of creating a healing community garden for veterans with the help of members of Disabled American Veterans, San Bernardino Chapter 12. They planted a three-quarter acre organic garden in Speicher Memorial Park called the Veterans Exploration Garden. For two years they’ve planted and harvested a variety of vegetables and herbs—1,000 pounds, which they give to veterans, community centers, and passersby who lend a hand with the garden—and also host barbecues for veterans.
Maintaining the garden is a lot of work, but now the veterans are getting a hand from Home Depot, the Incredible Edible Community Garden, and volunteers. 65-year-old Marine veteran Rudy Venegas told Nolan the garden is incredibly valuable to him. “This is an outlet to help those who have fallen, are injured or are disabled,” he said.
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Can a New Approach to Treating Vets Keep Them Off the Streets for Good?
This week the Department of Veterans Affairs opened a new residential treatment center in San Diego, designed to help veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan who are in danger of slipping into homelessness. The Aspire Center has rooms for 34 men and 6 women, and is unique in its focus on only veterans from these two wars. Directors of the Aspire Center hope that grouping together veterans of similar ages who’ve had similar experiences will produce better results.
The Aspire Center’s 28 staff members will offer vets therapy for PTSD, treatment for substance abuse, and occupational counseling. These types of services proved to be life-saving for Kris Warren, an Iraq Marine veteran who sought help from the VA in Los Angeles and after counseling was able to reunite with his family. Warren will be on staff as a social services assistant at The Aspire Center. “I know what it’s like to walk up those stairs, prideful, and ask for help,” he told Tony Perry of the Los Angeles Times.
The VA plans to open four more such residential facilities over the next two years in Atlanta, Denver, Philadelphia, and West Palm Beach, Fla. They will serve veterans of all ages, but if studies prove an advantage of grouping veterans with similar experiences together, the VA may expand the San Diego approach in the future. An estimated 286 veterans in San Diego are homeless or at risk for becoming homeless, and VA officials will be watching that number and the veterans who stay at The Aspire Center closely to determine if this approach can make a difference. So will Kris Warren. “Where they go, I’ll go,” he told Perry.
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These Sisters Created an Incredible Place to Help Veterans
Sisters Melissa Spicer and Melinda Sorrentino joined the family business straight out of college—working along with their father and other family members to run Campus Hill Apartments in Syracuse, N.Y. When their father sold the business in 2007, the sisters decided to use their real estate and renovation acumen to benefit veterans, whom Spicer had been concerned about for decades. At age 16, she saw a homeless man holding a sign that said he was a veteran, and she told Marnie Eisenstadt of the Syracuse Post-Standard, “I thought, ‘Oh, my God. How can this be?'” Spicer began a charity that trained service animals to help veterans, and by the time the family sold their business, her non-profit needed more space.
So the sisters and other family members put up $700,000 to buy a vacant, squirrel-infested lodge in Chittenango, N.Y. near Oneida Lake and renovated it to serve as headquarters for Clear Path for Veterans, a nonprofit focused on all aspects of easing veterans’ transition back to the civilian world. Clear Path offers veterans a place to enjoy natural beauty, a dog training program, peer-to-peer counseling (the Wingman Program), acupuncture, massage, free meals and culinary training, a “Saturday Warrior Reset” program and more.
Clear Path serves 230 veterans each month through the help of volunteers. Spicer and Sorrentino do not take pay for their work at Clear Path, so most of the donations they receive go directly to helping vets. Spicer told Eisenstadt, “If what you hope to do benefits the greater good of the community, from beginning to end, never quit.”
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All These Vets Need to Heal Is Two Wheels
Monika Monte left the military in 2004, after stints in both the Army and Marines. But eight years later, she was still struggling with the effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Then, in May 2012, she finally discovered a community that could help. Ride 2 Recovery is a national nonprofit providing veterans camaraderie and exercise through cycling events. The group puts on Challenges, multiple-day rides of 350 to 450 miles, weekly group rides, and supportsProject HERO, through which volunteers develop biking programs to help rehabilitate injured veterans. Volunteers modify bikes for those whose injuries require special equipment, donate bikes to those who need them, and teach veterans biking skills, such as how to ride in packs. For Monte, who frequently participates in the 25-mile weekly ride in Suinsun City, Calif., Ride 2 Recovery gave her peace of mind by putting her in touch with people who understood what she had been through. “It’s not just a regular bike ride,” she told Catherine Mijs of the Vacaville Reporter. “It’s all about staying together, starting together and finishing together.”
How One Veteran Discovered the Healing Power of Art and Made it His Mission to Share With Others
Denver’s Curtis Bean is an Army veteran who’s finally found his footing in civilian life through art. He enlisted at age 17, served two tours in Iraq as a sniper, and returned home haunted by the memory of a roadside bomb explosion that killed four friends. When those past traumas interfered with his personal life, he enrolled in the Denver VA Medical Center’s program for PTSD, where, he told Kasey Cordell of 5280, “I realized how therapeutic art was for me.” He told Jeremy Hubbard of Fox 31 Denver, “It’s very relaxing, and it helps me get the things that I have in my head out on paper, and hopefully out of my head for good.”
Bean, now 28, is a fine arts student at the University of Colorado in Denver, and runs a program for veterans called the Art of War Project. He offers free art classes for veterans at Hope Tank in Denver, and helped the VA introduce a regular art therapy program, in which he teaches once a week. Bean funds all the art supplies himself through donations and sales of Art of War t-shirts and hats.
Stacey Carroll, a nurse in the Denver VA Medical Center’s PTSD program, told Cordell, “It’s Curtis’ way of paying it forward and he has mad a great impact. The connection he gets—it’s like no other.”
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Here’s What You Probably Didn’t Know About PTSD
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder gets a lot of attention these days, but it’s not always a well-understood topic. Among the misconceptions about PTSD is the notion that it’s a relatively new diagnosis. It’s not. It’s a serious disorder that affects an estimated 5.2 million American adults every year. It’s common in veterans, although not even 40% of veterans who are diagnosed with PTSD when they come home get treatment. But it’s pervasive in non veterans too; about 7.8% of Americans will experience PTSD at some point in their lives. Tracing a history of PTSD, as far back as the first and second World Wars (and even in ancient mythology and the bible) can lead to a better understanding of the disease. Understanding can lead to better treatment, like cognitive therapy and medication. Perhaps more importantly, better awareness of PTSD will lead to increased ability to recognize the signs and seek help for a loved one. Check out this infographic to learn more.
This Vietnam Vet Is Helping Returning Soldiers Face Their New Foe: Paperwork
Mike “Maddog” Sater knows how difficult it can be to return from war. After enlisting in the Army right out of high school and getting injured in Vietnam by a booby trap, Sater depended on the support of others to heal his wounds and help him start a new civilian life. Now he’s giving back. As a chapter service officer for the Disabled American Veterans in Maryland, Sater meets with with vets and helps them face the new battle that awaits them when they return from war: paperwork. Sater has mastered the complex network of government bureaucracy that is the Veterans Administration, and helps returning soldiers check every box and fill out every form they need to receive benefits, treatment and assistance. It’s a task that can be daunting for a veteran suffering from a disability or PTSD, but these are the people who most need help. Sater travels out of state to meet with veterans who have trouble reaching his office, and has a hundred percent success rate for obtaining services for those who stick with him through the arduous application process, which can take months or even years. For his tireless work, Sater was named the 2014 Maryland Veteran of the Year by Maryland’s Joint Veterans Committee. “I can’t express how much that guy has done for everyone,” Joe Cuocci, adjutant for the Disabled American Veterans, told The Advocate of Westminster and Finksburg.
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