New York City Council Veterans Committee 3/1/11

MILITARY FAMILIES –  Military families have suffered enormously during their loved one’s deployment and NYC needs to offer a helping hand to these invisible citizens in need.

As we can see from the Vietnam war, where recently 200,000 veterans applied for benefits from disabilities due to Agent orange and other war-related injuries and the Gulf War, where out of 696,000 soldiers, 325,000 veterans are now permanently disabled, after effects of the wars, both social and financial last for generations.  The financial costs amount to trillions of dollars.  As to human costs, our country now loses more soldiers and vets to suicide than those KIA.  What is the effect of this on the morale of our armed forces and military families?  We should as Secretary Gates recommended last week, try to avoid involvement in such wars in the future.  Holliday442-4171

Now faced with these after effects, we need to create a Safety Net and Friendly Environment for returning veterans and military families who have given and risked all.  By fine tuning protocols, and being guided by principles of risk management for New York City agencies in partnership with the Veterans Administration, we can ensure that NYC does its part in standing up for veterans.

Federal Funds Could Help Close NY’s Budget Crisis:  The new GI Bill offers wonderful benefits.  10,000 veterans were expected to return to New York.  If veterans took advantage of the GI Bill, they could bring over 1.3 billion in federal funds to NYS.  However, NY is in competition with other states, who capture students before they return.  NYC should be recruiting for CUNY earlier, in readiness programs, exit interviews, and online.  E.g., two recent veterans wanted to enroll in Baruch or Manhattan Community, however they had a problem with late registration so they went to Mercy.  In addition they were dealing with finding housing. In order to double or triple the number of student veterans (now 2900) we suggest the City fine tune their protocols of recruitment and retention to support the special needs of the veteran population and assign staff for this purpose.

I.  ENSURE VETERAN UTILIZATION OF NY SOCIAL SERVICES

1.   Many veterans are parents.  Their kids usually go to public school and these families should be able to fully utilize the social service system of NYC, however they often are left out of it.  For example, a veteran who is on the GI Bill cannot get free lunch for their kids.  There should be an exception made for veterans receiving temporary assistance from the federal government while they go to school.  Income levels for family support services need to be calculated without factoring in temporary things such as GI bill. In terms of parking tickets, PTSD should be added to the list of medical exceptions as recent veterans often forget to pay their tickets and dealing with PTSD is not an acceptable medical excuse like a recent accident would be, and this creates a financial crisis because they can’t afford to pay the fines.

II. CREATE A SAFETY NET

2.  Veterans return to their old neighborhoods, and many of them live with their in-laws or parents for 2-3 years of transition to civilian life.  This is complicated by the frequency of PTSD, health problems and lack of jobs.  Military families need counseling and crisis intervention, perhaps through the hospital system, VA or a volunteers’ network.

A) Some veterans come home and are depressed and commit suicide, even if their parents are trained professional psychologists, e.g. the Luceys.

B) A young Captain in upper New York State kept his mother and sister up all night for most of the first year of his return because of his hyper-vigilance.  They were afraid he would kill himself.  Now he is helping to treat other vets.

C) A mother whose son had PTSD said he called her long distance and said, “I have a gun and I’m going to stick it in my mouth and blow my head off.”  She managed to talk him out of it, however, this family could obviously have used some help in this crisis.  The suicide rate is higher than the KIA rate on the front lines.  Imagine being a military family whose breadwinner or child survives the war only to kill themselves.  We must try to prevent suicides by providing fast crisis intervention to families who are not trained as psychologists or part of a Vets for Vets network.  Massachusetts has two veterans trained in crisis intervention in every county of the state who respond 24/7 to emergency calls.  Suicide has a domino effect; veteran friends are incapacitated mentally by grief.

3.  New York City would benefit from a Veterans Court similar to others in upstate New York in Buffalo, or in Texas.   We need to give veterans a second chance in certain cases.  Incarcerating veterans is an expensive solution as opposed to offering an alternative form of compliance that generally offers a much higher success rate.

4.  New York City needs an advisory committee devoted to veterans’ needs and to establishing a circle of employers who commit to employing veterans.  The fact that vets comprise 33% of homeless and double the unemployment rate is because there is a crack that vets fall through when they come home.  They are at a disadvantage because they have been out of their nexus and have not had the opportunity to search for work.  In cases where military families (e.g. parents) cannot afford to support their veteran relatives, housing should be built (using federal grants) such as the one that was demolished in NYC.

5.  U.S.  soldiers and veterans are being prescribed multiple medications, painkillers, sleeping pills, antidepressants and sedatives without any clinical trials to test for toxic interaction, which any pharmacist can tell you is lethal.  This may be responsible for the high veteran suicide rate. The late Senior Airman Anthony Mena (23 years old) returned home from Baghdad only to be killed by a toxic cocktail of prescription medications.  A toxicologist found eight prescription medications in his blood (NY Times).  We should insist that the NY VA and the NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation institute protocols to prevent these pharmaceutically-based tragedies which incidentally could develop into a class action suit.

6.  Create a questionnaire circulated among prospective and actual veteran students with an addendum form for their families.  This questionnaire or series of same, could also be circulated at the USOs, Readiness Groups of armed forces, and at forts and could address social service (e.g. housing and child care) problems, psychological and medical needs, and access to education.

7.  Better integration into city services for family support. ALSO income levels for family support services (low cost school lunch, other assistance, etc) needs to be calculated without temporary things such as GI bill and such.

75 vigils for peace, 50 in Brooklyn, 25 on upper west side; tabling at Brooklyn for Peace Fair, with attached leaflets**; visiting Congressmen Rangel, Nadler, Senators Gillebrand and Schumer; lobbying with AFSCE in DC; seminar in PTSD and domestic violence and violence against women in military at St. Mary’s Church (see below); participation in seminar on war at Unitarian Church on east side, Move the Money national mfso campaign;

When a soldier returns home either on leave or as a veteran, he or she is changing

from a violent environment to a civilian peaceful, one.  The state of alertness needed in a

war environment where someone is shooting at you or potentially trying to take your life is

much more than in normal domestic conditions.  Therefore, even though the soldier may love

his/her family, it takes time to readjust to reality.  At present, counseling is not mandatory for

PTSD or readjustment to family life.  Consequently, many families are having unnecessary confrontation or violent scenes which can reoccur on a chronic basis.  What seems like a personal attack may be a defensive over-reaction by a veteran or soldier with PTSD, feeling depression, fear, despair, hopelessness, etc.  Sometimes, the veteran may be experiencing a flashback to a trauma or life threatening situation, such as a bomb attack or IED explosion and another person may be viewed as a threat.  Sometimes, hyper alertness may result in a veteran staying up for nights in a row.  Warfare may result in personality changes.

One third of all female soldiers experience rape or sexual molestation or harassment.  So  returning female veterans need special attention.  They may withdraw and be overly emotional or suicidal and unable to work.  Any veteran may engage in risk taking behavior such as getting drunk, self medicating with  drugs or getting overly angry/ hostile, or hitting the ground on hearing loud sounds.  To intervene in these crises, one must be trained and at best, have similar experiences so that the counselor can really understand the situation. Thus, the Veterans Administration is training veterans to treat other veterans in readjustment.

The first three months after a soldier goes home, the Department of Defense is responsible for him or her.  After that it becomes the job of the Veterans Administration.  However, the VA has

A tiny percentage of the budget the DOD does.  Due to the fact that over two million soldiers passed through Iraq and Afghanistan, it is estimated 300,000 soldiers have gotten PTSD, 300,000 Traumatic Brain Injuries, over 30,000 return mutilated, and an unknown number have depleted

Uranium poisoning.  In the Gulf War in 1993 only a couple hundred deaths were reported on the American side, however, now out of 696,000 soldiers deployed, over 325,000 are completely disabled.  This year 200,000 Vietnam veterans applied for disability benefits.  You can see that

This matter of veteran care is long lasting and quite expensive for taxpayers, to say nothing of the divorces, and incidence of domestic violence.  If you need help with domestic violence involving a veteran, you need professional help.  You can call MFSO, IVAW, the VA or SWAN, if you are a female veteran with sexual abuse issues.