‘A Gross Dishonor': Cuts to Veterans' Mental Health Care
Losses in Nature
A.I. and Humans Image A demonstration outside a V.A. medical center in Detroit last month. Credit... Paul Sancya/Associated Press
To the Editor:
Re 'V.A. Workers See Chaos in Services for Mental Care' (front page, March 24):
I am a Vietnam veteran. I served with the 1st Cavalry Division as a sanitary inspector and shoe-leather epidemiologist. I spent more than 1,000 hours flying to bases between Saigon and the Cambodian border. We carried the wounded and dead on stretchers to aid stations or graves registration. After returning home in 1971, I went back to school and buried the war.
In 1990, Operation Desert Shield opened up a can of trauma for me and many vets. I could not accept that I, who had not carried a gun, was traumatized by my service. Over the next 30 years I went to family therapy, couples therapy and individual therapy. But it was only after Covid that I signed up for health care at Veterans Affairs. The trauma therapy there exceeded any I had done before. I believe all the V.A. health services today are nonpareil.
About six percent of the nation's population are veterans, and surveys have found that more than half of Americans have a close relative who has served in the military. Yet I do not hear or see my senators nor, with some exceptions, my representatives, objecting publicly and loudly to what President Trump and his appointees are doing to our veterans' services. If they want to be re-elected, they should get some backbone and speak out for the V.A. and all veterans.
This is not a political issue but one affecting the health of the nation. Their deafening silence is a gross dishonor. Let's put some substance behind 'thank you for your service.'
James C. Wright
Gladwyne, Pa.
To the Editor
The suicide rate among veterans is staggering — a more than double that of the civilian population. How, then, can a Republican administration that pins gun violence on the inaccessibility of mental health care justify what's happening at Veterans Affairs facilities around the country?
Between DOGE cutting jobs and driving clinical professionals to quit by fundamentally altering their positions, what's happening is unconscionable. And more lives will be lost as a result.
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