{"id":72423,"date":"2017-05-30T11:00:09","date_gmt":"2017-05-30T15:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=72423"},"modified":"2017-05-30T11:01:37","modified_gmt":"2017-05-30T15:01:37","slug":"nathan-fletcher-purple-heart-for-ptsd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=72423","title":{"rendered":"Nathan Fletcher: Purple Heart for PTSD"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chief Tango sends us a link to the Washington Post which published an opinion piece written by Nathan Fletcher, who claims to be a combat veteran of the Marine Corps variety and a professor of political science at the University of California at San Diego. His piece is entitled “Veterans with mental-health injuries deserve Purple Hearts, too<\/a>“. He tries to forward his theory that if we gave folks with diagnosed post traumatic stress a Purple Heart medal, that would reduce the suicide rate among veterans. He cherry-picks his evidence from a VA report on suicide among veterans;<\/p>\n

We must confront and overcome the stigma of mental-health injuries. It\u2019s time to provide equality of honor for sacrifice by awarding the Purple Heart for combat-related mental-health injuries.<\/p>\n

We veterans brag about physical injuries; they show grit, resolve and perseverance. There is no reluctance to get \u201cpatched up.\u201d We must likewise pay respect to the strength and resolve of transforming post-traumatic stress into \u201cpost-traumatic growth\u201d and encourage the same cultural embrace of those injuries. I know Marines who were given the Purple Heart as a lifetime honor for injuries bearing no lasting scars or impact. But Marines who served beside them in that same combat situation suffering from devastating post-traumatic stress get no recognition and no medal and are cast into the shadows.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers often say there\u2019s no difference between mental and physical injuries sustained in war, but our policy creates a clear distinction, a clear stigma. Studies show that suicide among veterans is more than twice as common as among civilians. Veterans are also less likely to seek help for their mental-health injuries because of the powerful stigma associated with post-traumatic stress. We must encourage veterans with mental-health injuries to seek available treatment \u2014 and that starts with recognizing their injuries as real.<\/p>\n

Awarding the medal is not just symbolic but also would send a strong message that we recognize and appreciate the sacrifices suffered while serving our country.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ll bet he liked the idea of improving our readiness by awarding everyone in the Army a black beret, too. What he skips over are some key parts of the VA report<\/a> for example;<\/p>\n

There is continued evidence of high burden of suicide among middle-aged and older adult Veterans. In 2014, approximately 65% of all Veterans who died from suicide were aged 50 years or older.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That means that the further veterans get away from their actual service dates, the more likely they are to commit suicide. That means to me, a layman, that the VA is the problem no matter how hard Fletcher tries to blame the DoD for their machismo<\/em>. Veterans over the age of 50 were not accepted by civilians like they are now. I guess that might have something to do with it.<\/p>\n

Back to Fletcher;<\/p>\n

Stigmas are rooted in deeply held beliefs that are tough to change. You will hear that if we make this change, veterans will fake their symptoms to receive a medal. This ignores the essence of those who served. I don\u2019t know a single Marine who would lie to get something he or she didn\u2019t deserve. And we should never base policy on the potential for isolated abuse.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, I have hundreds of pages of people who tried to “get something” they didn’t deserve. We shouldn’t base policy on the verbal meanderings of a political science professor, either. Blaming DoD for not expanding the parameters of their award system lets the VA off the hook when they should instead have their feet held to the fire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chief Tango sends us a link to the Washington Post which published an opinion piece written … Nathan Fletcher: Purple Heart for PTSD<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":70155,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-veteran-health-care"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/70155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}