With the end of the war in Iraq and the pending drawdown of forces in Afghanistan, the United States will see a substantial increase in the amount of combat veterans in the civilian world. At current there are approximately 300,000 veterans in the United States who suffer the effects from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder caused by combat operations. With this number sure to grow over the next few years, it is paramount to identify the organizations the government has set up to serve this population. The Department of Veterans Affairs has established the Readjustment Counseling Service (RCS) division of its healthcare branch. The RCS has established 302 Vet Centers across the country to provide servicemen and women with readjustment counseling to help make the transition from military to civilian life (Department of Veterans Affairs, 2012). This paper will discuss the organizational structure, functions, and design of RCS to illustrate how it will meet the needs of veterans.…
At Cacciutti Veteran Educational Foundation, our belief is that our discharged veterans deserve added consideration when obtaining gainful education and employment opportunities to be able to support themselves, along with proper medical care, both physical and psychological, to help the veteran assimilate into civilian life. Cacciutti Veteran Educational Foundation has noticed the lack of capable, skilled workers to take over for those who are exiting their respective fields, along with the rising unemployment rate and psychological problems of returning combat veterans like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as well as the problems that even non-combat veterans have assimilating back into civilian society. So Cacciutti Veteran Educational…
PTSD and Veterans: A Conversation with Dr. Frank Ochberg documents an interview of Dr. Frank Ochberg, M.D. by broadcast journalist, Mike Walter. Dr. Ochberg is a leading psychiatrist in the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with over 30 years of field experience. He is credited with editing the foremost text for the treatment of PTSD as well as participating in the team that created the medical definition for the diagnosis. Throughout the interview, Dr. Ochberg discussed many facets of PTSD as it relates to working with military veterans as well as working with civilians. In fact, he highlighted that there is no specific differentiation between civilian PTSD and that experienced by veterans. Dr. Ochberg discussed characteristics of an effective counselor for working with those that have experienced trauma, common problems encountered, approaches to utilize, as well as the treatment of co-occurring disorders such as depression (Gift from Within, 2008).…
We should help our veterans; we should not turn our back on them even if they are unemployed…
The interview with USMC Veteran Dave Smith was very insightful. Dave did a very good job at explaining his experience navigating the civilian world after discharge from the Marine Core. In his interview he discussed several important point but the there were thee that will influences how I will engage with Veterans in the future. The first Dave discussed was his struggle with self-confidence after being discharged from the military. He explained how his lack of confidences influenced his daily decisions and essentially had the power to change his life course trajectory. He talked about feeling like the only work he could do was manual labor because of a lack of self-confidences and the proper resources to help him translate his military…
Phil Klay’s Redeployment tells the stories of different American Veterans experiences as they fought in Iraq and as they attempt to return to a “normal” civilian lifestyle. Each of these soldiers faces the realities of war that cause them to change the way they see the world and how they fit into it. As they return home and begin to interact with people outside of the war, Klay describes the difficulties they face as they try to adjust to a “normal” life after months of deployment. Klay bring awareness to the stories of these veterans as they return home as a means to critique society’s lack of understanding on the struggles of veterans as they transition back into civilian lives.…
In chapter 18, A Brief History of U.S. Military Families and the Role of Social Workers (Rubin, Weiss, and Coll, 2013) discussed how U.S. Military families have played a vital role in the military community. This chapter also discussed how as time progressed, more resources became available to service men and women's families that were left behind. In addition, social workers played an important role in helping families improve over time by providing and establishing many needed services and programs.…
Soldiers coming home from war often have to overcome adversity when dealing with their inability to integrate back into their families and society, as well as coping with the loss of innocence.…
The podcast Cruel and Unusual covers the issue of the death penalty and whether or not it should be allowed in the U.S. It discusses the controversy within this issue, especially the lethal injection and the constitutionality of capital punishment in regards to the ban of cruel and unusual punishment in the 8th amendment. Some of the cases mentioned were Wilkerson v Utah where the Supreme Court initially ruled to allow a firing squad to be used in the death penalty and Baze v Rees (2008) in which the Supreme Court ruled that lethal injection was not cruel and unusual punishment, and therefore not unconstitutional. The impact that the issue of the death penalty and the court cases regarding it have on the country is that people are easily outraged…
We need to enhance services for female vets which provide a safe place for them to address their issues and rehabilitate back into society. It’s easy to criticize the military for not providing proper exit education to our troops or to blame the VA for the demise of mental health providers. It’s human nature to look for a quick fix to a complex problem. However, war is an experience that keeps on giving back through addiction, divorce, flashbacks, etc. Our soldiers and their families need all the support we can provide. Jeff Susman eloquently states, “We need to do more to reintegrate returning vets into civilian life. The reality is that we owe our vets—and their families—far more than we provide. (Susman, 2012) Susman quotes a soldier he met on a plane a month before Memorial Day. He sat next to a young man returning from his tour of military duty…”He seemed mature, upbeat, and whole. But when I asked him about his experience, he responded: “Sir, I gotta tell you, what I saw was hell.” (Susman,…
I feel that the tension in the Army between an occupation-based culture and a profession-based culture. The campaign is seeking to leverage the successes of the Army to maintain it as a profession and avoid becoming an occupation-based culture. “I have never seen the Army so focused and as resilient as I see now”. “What is it about the profession that has helped achieve results [in Iraq and increasingly in Afghanistan]?”…
Spouses Perceptions of Veterans Experiences and Symptoms. Journal of Family Psychology, 22(3), 586-594. Research Paper Evaluation/Score Sheet Content outside of textbook, 5 pages20 points Theory of Learning10 pointsAPA format10 pointsFormal writing style 5 points5 research sources, including 2 original research journal articles (2websites) 5 points5 publication dates within the last 5 years 5 pointsReferences complete, accurate10 points Research Project Evaluation/Score Sheet Appropriate Research Content 25 pointsFormal writing style 5 points5 pages, unique from Paper and beginning with METHOD 5 pointsMETHOD, with detailed descriptions in all 3 Categories 5…
of a crime he committed in 1999. His girlfriend during the time named Hae Ming…
There are numerous social problems that plague our world today. These issues can be very detrimental to our society as a whole and can also have very negative impacts on many lives. One major social problem we are facing today is the way we are dealing with and handling our United States Veterans. Despite the fact that we are one of the world’s most powerful nations we are failing to properly take care of our service members who put their lives on the line to ensure our safety and freedom as United States citizens. The issues facing our veterans are substantial and numerous. I will be focusing on the majority of the most outstanding and significant issues facing our veterans…
Locally in Minnesota a resource that is available to veterans is Veteran Resilience Project (VRP). VRP works with veterans to turn their trauma they have been through into growth (Project, 2016). Through this resource veterans are offered 12 free sessions of EMDR (Project, 2016). This program offers 100% confidentiality to their patients, realizing that PTSD is very serious and life changing for the veterans, which they want to acknowledge and not take away from them. In knowing that this is very serious the people of VRP respect each veteran and treat them as equals instead of “one of them”, referring to them as being a victim of PTSD. They believe in equality and dignity of a person at VRP. This program also will use their existing veterans…