Veterans At Risk

Recently, World War II veterans have come forward to claim compensation for health effects they say were caused by their participation in chemical warfare experiments. In response, the Veterans Administration asked the Institute of Medicine to study the issue. Based on a literature review and personal testimony from more than 250 affected veterans, this new volume discusses in detail the development and chemistry of mustard agents and Lewisite followed by interesting and informative discussions about these substances and their possible connection to a range of health problems, from cancer to reproductive disorders. The volume also offers an often chilling historical examination of the use of volunteers in chemical warfare experiments by the U.S. militaryâ€"what the then-young soldiers were told prior to the experiments, how they were "encouraged" to remain in the program, and how they were treated afterward. This comprehensive and controversial book will be of importance to policymakers and legislators, military and civilian planners, officials at the Department of Veterans Affairs, military historians, and researchers.

The challenges facing military veterans who return to civilian life in the United States are persistent and well documented. But for all the political outcry and attempts to improve military members' readjustments, veterans of all service eras face formidable obstacles related to mental health, substance abuse, employment, and — most damningly — homelessness. Homelessness Among U.S. Veterans synthesizes the new glut of research on veteran homelessness — geographic trends, root causes, effective and ineffective interventions to mitigate it — in a format that provides a needed reference as this public health fight continues to be fought. Codifying the data and research from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) campaign to end veteran homelessness, psychologist Jack Tsai links disparate lines of research to produce an advanced and elegant resource on a defining social issue of our time.

Approximately 4 million U.S. service members took part in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Shortly after troops started returning from their deployments, some active-duty service members and veterans began experiencing mental health problems. Given the stressors associated with war, it is not surprising that some service members developed such mental health conditions as posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, and substance use disorder. Subsequent epidemiologic studies conducted on military and veteran populations that served in the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq provided scientific evidence that those who fought were in fact being diagnosed with mental illnesses and experiencing mental healthâ€"related outcomesâ€"in particular, suicideâ€"at a higher rate than the general population. This report provides a comprehensive assessment of the quality, capacity, and access to mental health care services for veterans who served in the Armed Forces in Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation New Dawn. It includes an analysis of not only the quality and capacity of mental health care services within the Department of Veterans Affairs, but also barriers faced by patients in utilizing those services.

This document provides information on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and war-related stress for veterans & their families. It begins with background on PTSD and traumatic events, then describes common symptoms of PTSD and why they develop. The next section reviews problems associated with PTSD, such as depression, anxiety, and impacts on work & family. The final sections provide suggestions on coping with the disorder and describe treatment methods.

Suicide is a major public health concern in the United States (US), claiming over 36,000 lives each year and nearly 100 lives each day, and suicide among military and Veteran populations is of particular concern. Veterans returning from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, referred to as Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom (OEF/OIF) Veterans, may be particularly at risk, although the limited available data has shown mixed results. Several aspects of military experience may increase the risk of suicide, including mental health and substance abuse. Many risk factors specific to the OEF/OIF population have yet to be thoroughly evaluated and incorporated into clinical management. Ideally, suicide risk assessment tools need to account for the relationship among different risk factors and identify risk factors or combinations of risk factors that are particularly associated with suicidal self-directed violence. To be practically useful, such tools will be brief enough to be conducted in a primary care setting and will identify a threshold beyond which preventive action should be taken. Risk assessment tools should be able to discriminate those at high- and low-risk for suicidal self-directed violence. Likewise, studies of emerging risk factors need to evaluate the contribution of a new potential predictor of suicide and self-directed violence in the context of known risk factors in order to weigh the contribution of the new risk factor against those that are currently known. The objective of this report is to review recent evidence about risk factors and risk assessment tools within Veteran and military populations to provide evidence for clinical practice guideline development specific to these populations. The key questions addressed in this report were: Key Question #1. What assessment tools are effective for assessing risk of engaging in suicidal self-directed violence in Veteran and military populations? Key Question #2. In addition to the risk factors included by current assessment tools, what other risk factors predict suicidal self-directed violence in Veteran and military populations?

This book explores suicide prevention perspectives from around the world, considering both professionals’ points of view as well as first-person accounts from suicidal individuals. Scholars around the globe have puzzled over what makes a person suicidal and what is in the minds of those individuals who die by suicide. Most often the focus is not on the motives for suicide, nor on the phenomenology of this act, but on what is found from small cohorts of suicidal individuals. This book offers a tentative synthesis of a complex phenomenon, and sheds some light on models of suicide that are less frequently encountered in the literature. Written by international experts, it makes a valuable contribution to the field of suicidology that appeals to a wide readership, from mental health professionals to researchers in suicidology and students.