How Have You Struggled?

How can you help? Follow your own laws and regulations, good start? Actually let vets use the healthcare we earned, not hire the bottom of the barrel to “help” us. Any of the above. Over 70% of Veteran suicides are VA related. Look in the mirror. You’re the problem. When veterans go through years of red tape, when your organization does everything they can to deny benefits. When vets have to get congressional reps involved to force you to do your job. It’s disgusting. All that money could pay each veteran much more than just 100% and provide full healthcare if we fired all of you and put the funds to the vets. how can you help us? Abolish yourself and give us the funds or actually do what you’re legally bound to do.

The overwhelming amounts of comments from vets in the other post who’ve also had your C&P examiners lie is magnificent. You’ve killed more vets than our enemies. You are the problem. Removing you is how we lower veteran suicide.

Is there a way we can provide suggestions and or help?

The Bouldercrest foundation Warrior PATHH program changed my life. If anyone is struggling I cannot recommend this program enough.
https://bouldercrest.org/

Hello,
I enlisted during the Vietnam conflict but never was in country. I was dedicated and motivated.I made spec 4 fast and was post soldier of the year and heavy weight wrestling champion. Then I started to hear voices, cries and screams. Started walking in my sleep. I was scared to tell anyone because I hoped to make the military my career.
I was in training for the bomb squad and was afraid I was going to kill someone.
This was in the spring of 1975 and the bitter end of the war was being televised which made my paranoia anxiety even worse.
Finally one night I was so afraid that I was going to kill my wife that I went to the post hospital and turned myself in to the psych department. A was seen by a psych weekly and put on some medications. A month later I took my honorable discharge.
Within a week I murdered a man was arrested and put in mental institution diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and delusions.While their and thoroughly incoherent someone from a vet organization applied for my va disability which is now service connected and 100% tp.
Somehow, some way this bottom gave me a spiritual awakening and I began to regain my sanity.
2 years later I was bought to court and offered the insanity defense. I refused, fired my attorney and representing myself I plead guilty and received a life sentence.
During my 32 years of prison I was one of the lifers that started the original scared straight program that a movie was made about that garnered an academy award. I was a founding member of THE PRISONERS WEB which has been in almost every state, federal and many other country's prisons for more than 40 years and spawned a PTSD program for incarcerated veterans called PATRIOT'S OF VALOR which has been in numerous state and federal prison. I either started or was on command staff of veteran's organizations in the three prisons I was in.
After 32 years I was granted a lifetime parole. I was accepted into the Va's domiciliary program where my re introduction to society was amazingly effective. Everyone tried to help me make a new start.
I have been out 19 years now and near perfect parole. I own my own house and have a great job supervising a vocational training school for plumbers, electricians welders and machinist.
I have been able to help bring numerous other parolees from the halfway house for training and successful employment.
I still hope and plan to make a program for homeless veterans to have a place to stay and complete this training.
My Honorable Discharge was a key factor in my rehabilitation because despite the circumstance I knew I did serve the cause of freedom honorably. It also has afforded me Amazing VA benefits.
But I am also am always cognizant that if the crime had happened a couple of days earlier it would have been a dishonorable discharge and my life would have turned out differently.
Every day of prison and every since day I make it a point to be very grateful to have been born in America.

I struggled my entire career with the reality of being sexually assaulted by my leader, the one I should’ve been able to trust, the example, the coach, trainer, and mentor. I thought if I could forget about it and just keep moving on, then the hurt, embarrassment, and disappointment would disappear, too. It didn’t. It just dug deeper inside, and the darkness grew even more powerful.
I was a Specialist and he was a MSG. He used his position to bully me to meet him in places where we would be alone, and he would assault me. He did this numerous times over a year. I felt that I had no one to tell, and I was always afraid, always.
I grew up in a home where the situation was the exact same. I thought that when I joined the Army, I would be safe. That was not the case for me. My life was about running and hiding. I felt that I never had the chance to be me, to be happy and free. I believed that somehow I was doing something to make this happen to me. I thought that it was my fault and I didn’t know how to change it.
Now I know differently.
I hope to encourage others who have been violated and victimized in this way. It can lead to such devastation, self destruction, and darkness - so much to the desire and illusion of inviting death as is a friend and confidant.
But there is healing from the pain and freedom from the darkness. Someone else’s decision to hurt you is not your fault, just as it was not mine. But holding on to the pain and hurt, and allowing it to transform to bitterness and hate can be a choice. Know that that choice doesn’t free you. It entangles you even more and keeps you trapped.
Decide for yourself to get free. There is work to be done in the process of healing, but believe me, it’s worth it, and so are you!!
Let go and Live!!!

I Told my VA doctor that I was contemplating suicide. She tried to get me to see a mental health specialist immediately. It still took almost three months to see a therapist, but it did help. Perhaps hire more therapists. Even when my therapist called in sick it took me another three months to get an appointment to make up the session. I am impressed with the therapist have but not with the time it takes to see one.

I wanted to commit suicide many times. I felt like I'm worthless. I packed my two pistols and ammo to go away in the Sierra forest. Fortunately, I stopped visiting a friend on the way. They kept asking me to take them to casinos every day. I forgot completely that I was on my way to commit suicide.
What has worked best for me? Keeping busy is a key. I remember working all the time including day off work. The second thing is to talk about what you hate the most. I brought everything out in the open. These two things give me time to reflect myself. And the final part is when I got married and had a child. Now I have the responsibility to take care of my family unlike when I was single. I have a mission that I cannot let down.
Positive change is to accept the fact that not everyone is bad. I used to hate anything Cambodian. Now, I don't do that anymore. I refuse to peak to any Cambodians including my own family. I stopped speaking the language which I almost lost it. Those things have changed now.
I refused to seek any help from anyone. It took me more than 40 years to be where I am at. I wish that I seeked help early on.

Guidedogsofamerica.org matched me (no fees, they are a non-profit) to a service dog. He saved my life. I hope the VA can start funding non-profit organizations like this. They are effective and their dogs save lives. Period. ❤️ Stay safe out there everyone, you never know who you will meet.

I don't like doing things that are good for me. I can't explain it, but if I don't change it, it will be the death of me. Talking to fellow veterans, reaching out to the crisis line and, grudgingly, more therapy keeps me vertical and breathing. Not STRAC, but relatively shipshape.

I basically struggled for six years after my separation from the Navy. The biggest problem of my dark cloud asI remember back was loss of hope and any meaning in life. The Navy actually turned my life around, but I had trouble with the transition and fitting into civilian life. The Navy taught me how to study and did well in that going to college, but getting rid of the dark clouds were trouble. I used alcohol mainly on weekends and went in group therapy for three years. I also have a wonderful older brother who really helped me, I almost went back to the war three times, he gave me much needed encouragement. He got me back into scuba diving that I had done some in the Navy and earned my civilian license and dove once a month & two trips to Hawaii a year. It too long here to tell what also really turned my life around later( was caring for a research beagle) that did much to turn my life around. But today to stop suicide, I would say no drugs or firearms in one’s house, it makes it too easy and once the trigger is pulled, you can’t take it back. My father passed away when I was nine and said suicide was the coward’s way out which also rang in my head. Thank you for listening to me and all are in my thoughts and prayers, be strong and don’t let the evil devil win.