The combat and war experiences have a way of impacting people’s lives (Abbassi and Aslinia 45). There are those who are affected directly and others indirectly by the war. For the soldiers who participate actively in the combat face numerous challenges as loss of loved ones, colleagues, torture, and dreadful memories after the war is over. Their families, on the other hand, suffer indirectly through emotional torture as they are in constant grief and fear as to whether their loved ones will make it back or not. War veterans are the most affected individuals most of them having participated in many historical battles and being exposed to harsh environments away from their families. For veterans, the effects of war can be long-lasting. To others, the consequences can be deadly. The biggest issue is not to survive a war as a veteran but the life that one lives after the war is over. The life after the military, veteran’s quality of life, and how normal is there life after the war (Abraham, Lewis and Drummond 77). The most disturbing truth is that some of them remain damaged in their entire life due to the experiences they had in war zones. Some of them choose to self-medication in an effort to ease the pain while other lash and turn out to be violent in life and when dealing with others. A huge of veterans become homeless after spending many years fighting for their nation only to lack time to invest in their future settlements.
For many decades, some organizations both governmental and non-governmental have tried to help the war veterans to recover from their deadly experiences through counseling and vocational careers. Therapy has been the preferred solution but it has not brought complete healing to the veterans. That is due to the numerous obstacles they face beyond war experiences like homelessness, substance abuse, among other life struggles (Bowe and Rosenheck 301). There are experiences among the veterans that remain deeply buried in their lives that they choose not to share with their therapist and most of these struggles consume them from inside out until they reach the critical point where they cannot hold it anymore. The impact of these struggles is a self-destructive mechanism where they channel their anger to other things like substance abuse and hostility towards people. This paper delves into the lives of veterans after military exposure and their psychological struggles like PTSD among other disorders that create an addiction to alcohol and drugs in their homeless communities.
Literature review
Although posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), substance use disorder, military sexual trauma (MST), and homelessness may cause problems for the entire life of a veteran, the impacts may become severe near the end of life and complicate their lives and palliative care. In November 2009 during the President Obama era alongside the then-Veteran Affairs Secretary Erick Shinseki announced a plan to end homelessness among veterans in the USA within five years (Briggs and Reneson 77). In an effort to facilitate the initiative, the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) formed Opening Doors: Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness 2010. The process was gradual but effective and by the end of the proposed five years the homelessness among veterans was not at zero but significant improvement was evident. In August 2014 (Abraham, Lewis and Drummond 106), the U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development announced a decline in the number of homeless veterans in the nation.
The term “veteran” has a definition that lies between sources and programs. For this case scenario, a veteran can be seen as a person who has served in the military, irrespective of discharge status or active duty (Perl 23). On the other hand, the term “homeless veteran” refers to a person who does not have a fixed or permanent, adequate, and regular nocturnal residence. A person within a nighttime residence is either in a private or supervised housing purposely designed to provide temporal accommodations. These can be institutions spared to provide residence for persons with an intention of being institutionalized, or private areas spared to accommodate human beings. Veterans are former U.S soldiers who have completed their service and did not receive an honorable discharge (Hoggatt, Jamison and Lehavot 231). Many of these individuals are unable to sustain safe, suitable nighttime residence, adequate housing or a secure housing. Veterans form the highest percentage of homeless people in America.
The inability to take care of personal issues like family and housing leads to psychological disorders like anger, stress, shame, and depression among the veterans. Some of them may suffer from physical and mental health problems like posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic stress brain injury (TBI), pain from injuries, and substance abuse. Financial stresses, family problems, mental health issues, and substance abuse are the major causes of homelessness among the veterans (Ralevski, Gianoli and McCarthy 205). Family problems are caused by lack of support from family members and strained or failed relationships due to mental or physical health issues. Financial stresses erupt as a result of inadequate housing, skills for earning a living as the skills learned in the military cannot translate to the civilian workforce leading to unemployment, lack of medical insurance, poor welfare benefits, and low wages. For those willing to change their lifestyle after a period of substance abuse, the expenses are too high to afford.
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a form of anxiety disorder that happens to individuals who have experienced traumatic events in their lifetime such as horrific accidents or violence of war. For the veterans, combat exposure has been the leading cause of PTSD. For one to be diagnosed with PTSD, they have to have experienced, confronted, or witnessed an occurrence involving threatened or actual death or fatal injury, a threat to their physical integrity or that of others. The response of an individual after a traumatic event depicts the extent of the PTSD effects.
War-related PTSD has been existing since the World War I and has been nicknamed as “Shell Shock” during World War I and II or “Soldier’s Heart” in the Civil War period (Abbassi and Aslinia 145). PTSD came into limelight after the Vietnam War. Due to the extensive horrific experiences during the war, the veterans were diagnosed with PTSD and the numbers increased me during WWII. For the Korean veterans, many of them overcame PTSD by busying themselves with family and work. Later during after retirement, the disorder could creep in during moments of meditations about their past experiences. When PTSD remain undiagnosed, their impacts are felt after years when a person is unoccupied and some lifetime activities might trigger the past trauma and worsen a veteran’s life with severe symptoms.
Although it is difficult to determine the exact number of veterans who have suffered from psychological disorders, a survey done by National Vietnam Veteran Readjustment Survey in 1990, reported the following statistics (Hoggatt, Jamison and Lehavot 44):
About 14.1% depicted high levels of marital hardships, and 23.1% showed high levels of difficulty in parenting.
50% of all males who had experienced PTSD had criminal records and had served in jail at least once, 34.2% were in jail for more than once.
Those convicted of a felony were 11.5%.
Lifetime dependence on alcohol recorded a scale of 39.2%.
40% of the male veterans were victims of divorce for more than once.
From the above data, one can see that the general problems associated to PTSD among homeless veterans are: alcohol abuse, unemployment, despair, shame, feelings of hopelessness, and relationship problems including violence and divorce.
Impacts of PTSD and other Social Disorders
The aftermath of war among veterans cuts through medical and psychological areas. One of the impacts is elevated mortality rates. Most of the soldiers live in denial and opt to keep their past experiences to themselves. During therapy sessions, they fail to open up to their therapist. The reason for not opening up is the notion that no one has the ability to understand their predicaments. The unspoken issues torment them internally and depression diseases like hypertension, high blood pressure, or even stroke may eventually kill them. About 2/3 of these problems are preventable (Bowe and Rosenheck 123). Another issue that comes along is substance abuse. As seen earlier, veterans are discharged without honor as compared to other forces in the military. After serving in the army for some years in a foreign land, they are left on their own without the financial support of a place to earn a living. In many cases, veterans turn to drug abuse in an effort to sooth their disturbed mind. Drug abuse makes them lose their self-worth and self-esteem. Mental illness is another disorder that veterans face after their combat experiences. When PTSD is diagnosed for a long time without a remedy, the person may go to the critical point of losing their mind.
Impacts of problems
Military service and deployment may change the life of a soldier for worse. For a small percentage, their relationships might be reinforced due to the period of separation. Conversely, for a huge percentage, relationships suffer and many their families undergo a period of dysfunction and negative consequences. Shaw and Hector (2010) depicted an approximate number of veterans having undergone divorce and separation after combat or during combat. The reason for the weakened communication with family members attributed to the long period of separation that made them lose track of their loved ones. Some the family members saw isolation as a remedy to their daily struggles. That ultimately negatively affected the family ties.
The issue of emotional absence is common among families of deployed veterans even after deployment and discharge. After long periods of deployment, there is an intense feeling of detachment and disconnection from family members (Briggs and Reneson 67). Despite their current physical presence with their significant families, there is an emotional void that still exists between the two parties. The feeling of having fun and relaxing among veterans changes, thus regulating their social aspect when interacting with others. The home life and employment capabilities are also affected due to disturbed nights that most of them suffer from sleeplessness, lack of concentration, and other making it difficult to interact with normal people. Financial stability is an underlying issue for veterans and that escalates the stress levels. Soldiers suffering from mental disorder find a difficult time in trying to readjust to the new environment as compared to those without mental illness. For that reason, not only is the individual aspect of a soldier is affected but also the relationship aspect.
For struggling war veterans, the other possible outcome is to be homeless. The well-documented issue has proven to affect a huge number of soldiers after combat. In addition to that, according to a research done by National Survey of Homeless Assistance Providers and Clients conducted in 1999 by the urban institute, the veterans made a 23% of the total homeless people. Among the veterans, 70% of the lot suffered from alcoholism or drug and substance abuse, and 45% suffered from mental illness (Briggs and Reneson 233). The above disorders and addictions are attributed to poor living conditions among veterans. The sad fact is that among the homeless population, a huge number cannot meet their basic needs with a 28% unable to afford food. An estimated 40% went for one or more days within the month without food.
Homelessness and mental illness are destructive and play a huge role in exacerbating other issues like disturbed relationships and violence. According to Elbogen and Colleagues (2008) found out that there was a link between violence and unstable working conditions among veterans. Violence can be channeled to self or other people like their family members and spouses or manifested in absurd activities like criminal acts. In 2009, an alarming scenario happened at Fort Carson, Colorado, where eight people were gunned down by six soldiers (Ralevski, Gianoli and McCarthy 205). That was an indication of the worse that can happen when the issue of PTSD is unaddressed among the veterans. Such soldiers hurt others as a result of the hurting they experience inside. With the escalated prevalence of homelessness and mental disorders among veterans, the tendency of violence should be seen as a social issue rather than a military issue.
Discussion
Veterans as discussed in the above literature, they suffer from mental disorders due to their past experiences in war zones. The government lacks a proper system to discharge them and they are left on their own to carry on with life. The homeless veterans experience a new exposure different from combat one and that creates a hardship when trying to cope and interact with people. The human physiological aspect is modeled in a way that it responds differently when exposed to traumatic experiences. According to the social theory, the human brain develops a defense mechanism where if such a scenario happens it will recreate the earlier experiences causing similar harm to the person (Abraham, Lewis and Drummond 88). War veterans experience horrifying moments during the war. Such occurrences include: witnessing a colleague being killed in combat, extreme injuries that even lead to loss of body organs, torture in the hands of their enemies, and solitude or alienation from their loved ones.
Substance abuse, posttraumatic stress disorder, and addiction have a complex relationship that makes treatment futile. Veterans who experience escalated levels of stress turn to alcohol or drugs to escape their tormenting thoughts. Drugs are known to cause pleasure, provide a distraction form hardships, and decrease anxiety. The government does not provide salaries or discharge stipends that can help the veterans to live a good life, thus their only remedy is substance and alcohol abuse. To worsen the situation, the treatment of these disorders are expensive for the veterans to afford. Their homeless nature has brought about negative exposure in an effort to earn a living (Bowe and Rosenheck 134). The thing to keep in mind is that these people are well equipped with military skills and when that energy is not used positively, they use it for criminal activities. Some of the veterans have been convicted of felony or robbery with violence and have served for a couple of years in jail.
Human beings are created to intermingle with fellow humans. Veterans are deprived of that luxury due to long periods of alienation that has led to social detachment from their friends and families. After returning from combat, despite their physical presence with people, emotionally they are lonely and PTSD eats them slowly from the inside. The violence depicted by these individuals is a sign of the internal struggle going on within their minds. The emotional separation with their loved ones creates a void that worsens their situation as they have no one to share with concerning their past experiences (Abbassi and Aslinia 255). In many cases, some veterans are forced to live with their relatives due to their homeless nature. During that period, they experience nightmares that cause them to be seen as a threat to young kids and other close members. People suffering from PTSD tend to have anger issues and that makes them live solitary lives to avoid hurting others.
Recommendations
A lot of research has been done to help ease the situation among the veterans. One of the ways of helping the veterans is to come up with activities that keep them occupied to prevent idleness. According to the social learning theory, persons suffering from PTSD and other mental disorders can be treated by offering them occupations that keep them engaged in a social way. One of the ways is through offering them pets like dogs and cats to keep them company. Such animals as discussed in the animal therapy, have a way of showing compassion thus easing the pain among veterans (Hoggatt, Jamison and Lehavot 301) Such methods have been employed in students and children in Libya after the war and proved positive results. Although these research has not been tested on veterans, similar applications can be tested and prove to be of help.
In conclusion, for veterans to experience relief and healing, there is the urge for treatment. First, the society should address the issue of stigma and stereotype. Among many people in the society, they deem war veterans as aggressive people who possess no qualities of living with other people. The society has to be enlightened on what mental health is- an actual illness with symptoms and signs that are treatable. Possible signs of untreated mental illness such as homelessness, violence, and strained relationships, need to be addressed as personal, social, and familial issues. For the veterans to be assisted, treatment has to come from both the civilian practitioners and the military. The military has the obligation of having a workable plan after the veterans are discharged instead of abandoning them. On the other hand, the civilian health workers should collaborate with the government to offer subsidized cost for those undergoing therapy session. It is hoped that with time, through better education, treatment, and research, the veterans will receive the care they deserve and have pride in serving their nations.
Bibliography
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