https://www.wehonorveterans.org/veterans-their-needs/specific-populations/homeless-veterans
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4671760/
This article, “Homeless veterans,” published by the website, we honors veterans, explains why American veterans tend to be homeless. The number of homeless seems to keep increasing, and in the U.S. about 33 % of whole homelessness are from veterans; the number of retired U.S. veteran homeless is getting greater than even the number of veterans who died during that war. (Homeless Veterans, n.d.). Basically, what causes people to become homeless is such as “shortage of affordable housing, livable income, and access to health care” (Homeless Veterans, n.d.). However, retired American veterans have another reason why they tend to become homeless; they are more likely to live with lingering effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, known as PTSD, which results from witnessing and experiencing a traumatic event such as wars, crimes, fires, accidents, death of loved one, and substance abuse, “compounded by a lack of family and social support networks” (Homeless Veterans, n.d.).
Retired American veterans are more likely to get addicted to drinking alcohol and smoking than non-military personnel that make the veterans uncontrolled. Thus, it is no wonder that American veterans are subject to get mental health like PTSD that causes them to have serious disease; there are a lot of kinds of mental health that those veterans tend to get: substance use disorder (SUD), traumatic brain injury (TBI), depression and so on. SUD is a condition when veterans drink alcohol and smoke; it promotes the risk of veterans drinking and smoking. TBI usually cause damage to veterans’ brain such as dementia and disorientation. U.S. veterans get depression too because of these mental health. The rate of the veterans getting depression is about 14 %, but “major depression is a treatable illness with 80% – 90% success rate using medication, psychotherapy, and/or electroconvulsive therapy” (US veterans, 2015). Committing suicide among veterans is also common; “eighteen to 22 American veterans commit suicide daily” (US veterans, 2015). Although the younger they are, the more likely they commit suicide, even old veterans, aged over 50 years old, are almost twice as likely to commit suicide compared to non-veterans.
To reduce the number of homeless who retired American veterans, some faculty developments support those veterans for improving veteran outcomes and providing excellent care to those who served this country. Likewise, the government also put effort into providing some affordable housing, promoting veterans employment and so on. I have seen some aids for young veterans such as tuition discount at college but not for adults. In other words, I have never seen some aids for older veterans. In my opinion, since we can live our life without fear of any problems thanks to veterans, I would say the veterans deserve to get more aid so that the tendency that American veterans become homeless might disappear.
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