Military Mental Illness

Disabilities and Mental Illness
When individuals go into the military they have a complete physical checkup to get cleared to join a branch of service they have selected. Individuals go into the military without having any disabilities or a mental illness, but this can change while they serve during combat. Before signing up, he or she knows the risks such as putting their life on the front line before going into the military. While a solider is in combat, he or she is faced with many types of situations that can cause trauma, physical disability or a mental disability. When veterans come home from serving in combat some of the situations veterans faced causes many to become homeless due to mental illnesses such as posttraumatic stress disorder

For the most common types of physical harms it is musculoskeletal injuries due to combat and over straits or stressors on the muscles and bones (Scwartz, Libenson, Astman, & Haim, 2014). Injuries such as these have a hard time to heal right if not given enough time for proper healing. Without having the proper healing for an injury there is a higher risk to reinjure the injured by carrying and lifting heavy equipment g (Roy, Ritland, & Sharp, 2015). Injuries could be sprains, broken bones, lost of a limb, back injuries, etc. Injuries can cause the individual to get sent home or even medically discharged from military. Being medically discharged from the military a veteran has to adjust from being in combat to going back to his or her civilian life, but this is not so easy to do. If a veteran who had been medially discharged from the service from an injury he or she may have a hard time to find a job or to keep a job due to the physical disability. The VA has programs available to address these problems of unemployment and disability, but the veteran would need to make application to receive the

One common key in treating PSTD is to catch it early just like other disorders. Early prevention with cost-effective treatment is now a priority for the veterans (Wangelin & Tuerk, 2014). The VA believes it was important to increase the mental health practitioners for veterans who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan because of the increased of PSTD in veterans (Bernardy, Hamblen, Friedman, Kivlahan, 2011). Some new popular ways in helping veterans with PSTD are involving vivo or imaginable exposures to the traumatic events that veteran was exposed to in combat. Veterans will need to adjust to civilian life but due to his or her disability it can affect their ability to keep a job, which can lead them to become homeless. Without the proper support from family and friends he or she may feel alone causing it hard to keep a steady job and can lose everything he or she