I started working with soldiers suffering from PTSD during the Vietnam War. Those men and women were mostly a draft military with shorter deployments, and much was still unknown about post-traumatic stress. Today, troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are all-volunteer, and we know much more about the causes and treatment of war-related psychological problems. more

There are many people out there supporting our Veterans in thousands of ways, and, occasionally, I run across someone doing something really special.
One of those people is Dan Horkey, from Port Orchard, WA. Dan has a company that provides decorative prosthetic “tattoos” for amputees. Horkey has just been approved by the VA as a government contractor, which will provide Veterans who are receiving prosthetic care with his service, free of charge. more

This Associated Press article at MSNBC.com covers a study that shows that soldiers who receive morphine shortly after being injured are half as likely to develop PTSD as troops who did not receive the painkiller. more

As we celebrate this New Year, I look back with pride at the work the National Veterans Foundation (NVF) was able to do in 2009, serving America’s Veterans. I also remain deeply concerned about the future of America’s growing Veteran population. more

I feel like if you're going to send men and women off to war to do the most unnatural thing -- man's inhumanity to man -- go and kill other humans regardless of culture or religion or whatever, then you have the responsibility to bring them back and deprogram them, and they don't. That's why these things happen. So there has to be some justice. more

Herbert writes, “The air is filled with obsessive self-satisfied rhetoric about supporting the troops, giving them everything they need and not letting them down. But that rhetoric is as hollow as a jazzman’s drum because the overwhelming majority of Americans have no desire at all to share in the sacrifices that the service members and their families are making. more

What I saw that night was Tracers, one of the truest and most compelling tellings of the Vietnam soldier’s experience that I had ever seen, and that I have ever seen since. Its debut coincided with the growing discontent among Vietnam Vets who had been treated so poorly by the American public and government. Veterans had begun gathering on the lawn of the Los Angeles Veterans Administration building in a hunger strike. more