Thanks for asking!
You are now one up on the VA. But there's more.
I'm sure some of this will resonate with other veterans as well.
I want the VA to stop saying stuff like, "But we don't need special programs for women. There's no need."
I want the VA to listen. I'm not stupid. You don't learn two languages and maneuver out of contretemps with the KGB by being stupid. Likewise, assuming you know everything about a veteran is stupid. What's the problem with asking to verify?
The VA needs to realize that their appeals process is so dire, so soul-draining, and so drawn out that veterans are actually dying before their benefits come through. I submitted my DD-214, and then got asked for "more". I supplied my ARCOM citation, which cited several incidents, including one where I held my position during a huge battle despite being over-run and running through my ammo at a terrific clip. That wasn't enough either, so I finally submitted a civilian's video of that battle, after which the VA dawdled about watching it. After they did so, they asked me, "Did you have a traumatic childhood?" Because whose childhood doesn't include mortar attacks, rocket-propelled grenades and watching blood fan out from a guy's head when he gets clipped by a sniper's bullet? There are veterans losing their houses while they wait for benefits. Remember Specialist Towne? He was the soldier who got injured by a mortar, including suffering a blown eardrum, which he did not have when he went to Iraq.
The VA diagnosed him with a personality disorder. They ignored his sudden deafness entirely. Not until he testified before Congress did the VA change its tune. What happens to veterans who are incapacitated by mental illness?
The VA needs to return phone calls. Period. Why do I have to point this out?
The VA needs to discipline staffers who are either actively or passively harming patients with neglect or what seems to be actual malice. Phone calls from VA staffers seem to happen only when a Senator forces them to do their job.
The VA needs to realize that their efforts to constantly argue that the patient's childhood is at fault instead of wartime trauma are in themselves so damaging and so medically unethical that they are harming patients. I didn't recognize myself when I read the doctor's notes----nor my childhood. They emphasized the negative things---and made the positive things disappear. And they downplayed or minimized all the bad things I saw in Iraq. If I made it into the VA once out of every six times....they ignored the five times.
Respecting veterans means not making them repeat themselves over and over and over with every phone call, every new person, every visit, to the point where every visit involves restating their case to a new skeptical audience every damned time.
The VA needs to stop the practice of treating veterans as if they're drug-seeking hypochondriacs who just need to get over it.
The VA needs to listen to veterans.
Here's what you should never do when trying to allegedly help a veteran:
Make assumptions. Again, what's the problem with asking for clarification?
Ask for specifics before you go on.
Never, EVER, use some variation of "Get over it."
Don't tell them to stop bitching, especially if they're a woman, or if they're going through something you haven't. Double this if you're a man speaking to a woman. They're not bitching, plus it's a sexist thing to say if a man uses it on a woman or another man. (Are you one of those people who whines about why black people can use the "n-word" but white people can't? Yeah, it's like that.)
Listen. If you don't have enough information, ask. Don't think you have enough information until the veteran says you're correct. Do you notice a theme developing?
Did I mention absolutely never saying, "Get over it"? There's lots of different ways to say this. Don't use any of them. If you're curious, you can see if you can think of variations on this theme in the comments. We could have a contest.
Don't share that you've had great experiences with the VA. Why are you telling this to someone who's having horrible experiences with the VA? Seriously, why? It carries with it the implication that you don't believe the person who's talking. This is not just a problem with discussions about veterans, however. It's amazing how often people do this. Someone has a misfortune? There will always be somebody who will step and say that, well, they've never had a problem.
Don't Rihanna somebody. This comes from the way Chris Brown's fans---based on his mediocre music and his bow ties----couldn't cope with the fact that he beat his then-girlfriend into a pulp, so they decided that Rihanna must have provoked him somehow into a rage. That's male privilege by the way. Don't assume that horrible circumstances mean that the person suffering them has caused them. This is known as the just world theory. It works by allowing people to think the world is fair, and that bad things only happen to bad people.
My suggestions for therapy for veterans?
Veterans tend to be an idealistic bunch, except for the small percentage of ne'er do wells that you find in any large group. Disability of some sort means that they feel they've lost the ability to help other people that is so central for so many of us. I once saw a Viet Nam vet, so frail he had to use a walker, stand up and talk about how he was stressed out about his son and the worsening economy, and all the measures and efforts he took to keep not just his family together, but his son's. This on top of his own numerous injuries. You know what? That kind of thing is heroic, and nobody had ever said that to him till I did. He was being genuinely heroic in doing all that he did, and it's a good idea to recognize that that tendency deserves praise--or at least recognition.
Connecting veterans with the community, with helping others, might be a very good way to help them---and other veterans. Veterans can support other veterans, but helping the community also gets them out of their day-to-day grind and out of their heads, too. For more seriously ill veterans, though, this might not be possible in big ways. Everyone's different. But we need to help one another.
Discipline and recreating some familiar elements of the military unit could be helpful. Veterans get used to the reassuring presence of their battle buddies. Coming home to isolation is a jarring change. You can't simply slap two vets together, though, and expect them to get along automatically.
Veterans have different levels of disability, and suffer from different illnesses to different degrees. Somebody with milder symptoms could get along with someone who's more ill, but don't count on it. Again....getting 'battle buddies' together would take time.
There are a lot of homeless veterans. I think one of the stupidest things I've ever heard was demanding that such vets get clean before they are given shelter. What could be more difficult? I say give them shelter, and realize that this makes it easier for them to get clean. Frankly, on the streets, getting high may be just self medicating, and if the VA won't do it, are you going to tell some desperate person that you're going to take away their sole method of coping? Give them shelter first, then work it out. If every VA does not have a dedicated homeless veteran office, they should have. And there should be a way for people to offer assistance---showers, storage, perhaps a bed---to veterans who are in dire need.
There's a lot of research now on how having pets lowers the blood pressure, reduces anxiety, and can reduce depression amongst other benefits. There's lots of adoptable pets in animal shelters that need homes, or foster homes. Seems to me we could bring these two together and benefit both.
Members of the military can be very kind and helpful to other service members----but when they're not there's little that is more of a betrayal. I had more than one NCO who never left the wire tell me I didn't have it that bad in Iraq. I'll never forgive them, not that that bothers them. That kind of thing comes from someone with a smug, simplistic worldview. Is it any surprise this type of sentiment comes from Republicans?
I think, frankly, that a lot of the therapy at the VA is driven more by contractor profits than helping veterans, and that if it's not, it's not done well enough to help anybody, much less veterans. (VAs differ to an amazing extent around the country, and some veterans get better treatment than others due to various isms. Don't discount that.) Remember the Walter Reed scandal? Remember the veterans who were infected with HIV? Remember the numerous times the VA got caught shredding documents beneficial to veterans' claims?
Volunteer at your local VA, and visit your local Veterans' Home. Veterans all over need help with things like transportation, cleaning, shopping, pets, yard work, things like that.
Veterans can have trouble asking for help. They're used to offering it. Be prepared to take hints, especially from older male veterans, who may have an especially difficult time of it.
The company of other veterans can be very reinforcing and comforting to other veterans. However, I absolutely do not recommend mixing the criminal element with veterans who have not committed crimes. Why do I say that? Because I got put in a therapy group with a bunch of sex offenders and REMFs who proceeded to vent about what bitches their victims/girlfriends/wives were. One guy was a full bird colonel who had harassed the women in his command so viciously and repeatedly that he had been stripped of it all. He blamed them. He whined about it constantly. And he sounded like Rush Limbaugh when he talked about women, which he did constantly. My VA didn't see him as the problem. I was the troublemaker because I didn't want to sit there and submit to what amounted to a hostile environment while this guy relived his decades of harassing women.
Little things like privacy and shelter and a tiny little safe space all one's own can be taken for granted if you've always had them. For veterans, these things could be healing on their own.
Healing requires consistency, too. This provides a kind of safety in itself.
The VA could improve its performance by very simple methods. It hardly seems excessive to ask for returned phone calls, medical care that would improve the veteran's situation---and perhaps enable them to return to work again. If medical providers don't want to provide medical care----I know this is a shot in the dark----then it seems reasonable to suggest a change of employment, and leave the medical care to people who actually, you know, care.