Veterans who now work with fellow veterans to address mental health concerns spent time on Veteran’s Day discussing the ongoing stigma surrounding mental well-being and opening up about it to their peers.
The Erie County Anti-Stigma Coalition hosted an online roundtable during the noon hour Thursday, in which veterans of multiple generations shared their experiences and their observations.
“According to the website statistics to compare the years 2008 and 2019, there was nearly two fold increase of veterans living with a serious mental illness going from 5% to 9.4% of all veterans,” said Karl Shallowhorn, board member of the Coalition. “The online resource Heroes Mile indicates that veterans deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan in Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom display an 11- to 20-percent chance to develop PTSD in a given year. For context, that means that of the 1.9 million veterans who served in these operations, 209,000 and 380,000 will develop PTSD.”
A continuing problem, the participants agreed, is that too many veterans struggling with mental illness do not come forward to seek help. One of the primary reasons is that admitting the problem is seen as a show of weakness.
“It was many years ago, but it constantly was never even talked about as an option when I was in,” said Max Donatelli, an Air Force veteran who served as a mechanic in Vietnam during that conflict. “I think that there still is that stigma that's attached. And I think that really people, I think end up keeping a lot of that in. And I think that's part of what the reason is, that I think it's difficult for people to really open up enough to say, you know, I really need some help.”
Others believe admitting the need for help with their mental health will harm their careers and opportunities, suggests Delcey Pulvino, a Desert Storm era veteran & readjustment counselor at the Buffalo Veteran Center.
She also noted that the United States military is an all-volunteer force, which more mobilized. Those on the go, who may be struggling with a mental health crisis, often fail to acknowledge and seek help in between their deployments.
“Those mobilizations which can end, they don't sometimes they don't want to, because they want to be able to keep doing it and keep doing it,” Pulvino said. “That's the purpose that they have. That's how they see themselves in the world and how they see themselves serve. Those are some barriers that I see affecting their ability to come and get help. Because they're thinking more about their careers, they're thinking more about what that next mission is about, as opposed to really thinking about what they need to be able to continue to function as a as a healthy soldier.”
But one doesn’t necessarily need to experience live combat in the field to suffer a trauma, and its after-effects. Alyssa Vasquez, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, now works with the Veterans One Stop Center in Buffalo. She says many who conduct missions while never leaving US soil often bring those traumas home each day.
“One thing that is unique to today's veterans is that the battlespace is changing, where you have a lot of virtual engagements and you can't really disconnect from the family here, go deploy and it's like these two separate lives, where it was in the past you were deployed away. Now it's, you do your operations, you come home and you're kissing your kids good night, and that can really mess with a soldier’s or a military member’s mentality.”
The latest National Veteran Suicide Prevention report indicates 17 veterans, on average, resort to suicide per day.
The 24-hour Veterans Suicide Prevention Hotline is available online or by dialing 1-800-273-8255, followed by pressing 1 when prompted.
