a. Attention Getter : When people ask me why I joined the military I think of all the reason that I did it for, but I think Toby Keith sums it up the best : “ ’cause freedom don’t come free. ” b. Topic : Freedoms come with a great cost but yet we still do not care for our veterans well enough c. Preview: Today I will tell you how veterans suffer from Post traumatic stress disorder or PTSD and cant get help, how veterans are homeless and why they are , and finally I will look at this from a soldiers point of view Body A. PTSD a. According to National Institute of Health , “ as much as 20 percent of Iraq war veterans suffer from PTSD”
b. As you can see thats nearly a quarter of all veteran that went to Iraq have PTSD, that is a lot of soldiers and almost as high as the Vietnam PTSD rate. You may ask what the government is doing to help these soldiers that risk there lives for there country, and I bet you will be surprised with the answer. The government is actually trying to tell soldiers that they are not suffering that they actually have a personality disorder. c. NBC reported on a soldier Named Daniel Hibbard who was diagnosed twice with PTSD but then something unexpected happened Hibbard received a letter reversing his PTSD diagnosis.
His new diagnosis, which was assigned without an in-person examination or assessment, is personality disorder. d. These men and women come back from war and hope there country will be there to help them, but instead they turning away from vets leaving them on their own with no medicical help. B. Homelessness a. When you walk around a city like Chicago you see many homeless people on the street begging for money so the can eat some food for the first time that week. Well it may surprise that a high majority of those people you see are veterans that weren’t helped when they returned from war.
According to USA Today “ Veterans make up 1 in 4 homeless people. ” b. The homelessness is do to the fact that when veterans come home many employers will not hire them, it isn’t because they are not qualified or that they don’t know the job it is something completely different. CBS says that “ soldiers are qualified for a wide variety of work but have metal war wounds that concern civilian employers that keeps them from hiring soldiers. ” Just because a soldier comes back and has PSTD does not mean he will go into a work places snap and go on a violent rampage.
These men and women come home and want come back into society and be accepted, welcomed, and feel like they have helped the people they fought for. The don’t wanna be singled out and and ignored because of what they went through, it is just not fair not to hire someone that is perfectly qualified and able to do a job and not give them that job because they were a veteran. Soldiers POV a. As current enlisted soldier in the Army I feel that the care that veterans get upon return from war is mediocre at best.
They have good health care and pensions , if you don’t suffer from PTSD they don’t care enough for these individuals. Yes they have some help for them but the government looks for ways to not help or to give them as little help as possible. These are men and women are willing to give there life, see people die, kill others, and leave there families all in order to protect our country and they can’t get help with the problem they get from going to war. b. I Interviewed my older brother Mike who is in Germany right now, but had two tours to Afghanistan and one to Iraq.
When he came home before deploying to Germany he was diagnosed with PTSD. I asked him what the government did to help him. He told me “ I came back and started having terrible night terrors and screaming in my sleep. I started off by going to a psychologist that diagnosed me with PTSD , then was refereed to a doctor who also said I had it. I then went to the government health insurance looking for help with my medical bills, and medicine, which I was on about six. And they said they needed a second opinion, so I saw 2 more psychologist and a physician who all then agreed I had PTSD.
The government helped pay for my medicine and medical bills from doctors barely instead of the $100,000 bill I had after jumping through hoops to prove to them I had it I was still stuck with a $80,000. While I only make about $40,000. so now I am stuck with debt that will take years to pay off. “ Conclusion a. As I take my seat b. I hope that seeing how veterans with PTSD , and homeless veterans are treated , and looking at it from a soldiers view helped you see how bad that our veteran aid is in desperate need of reform.
c. Men and women are willing to sacrifice everything to protect this country and your freedom, the least they deserve is proper aid when they come home.
Work Cited
“Feature: Post Traumatic Stres Disorder PTSD: A Growing Epidemic / Neuroscience and PTSD Treatments. ” U. S National Library of Medicine. U. S. National Library of Medicine, 2009. Web. 13 Nov. 2012. <http://www. nlm. nih. gov/medlineplus/magazine/issues/winter09/articles/winter09pg10-14. html>. Ruiz, Rebecca. “Veteran Fights VA to Keep PTSD Diagnosis. ” U. S. News. N. p. , 22 May 2012. Web. 13 Nov. 012. <http://usnews. nbcnews. com/_news/2012/05/22/11744723-veteran-fights-va-to-keep-ptsd-diagnosis? lite>. Rouke, Matt. “Veterans Make up 1 in 4 Homeless – USATODAY. com. ” Veterans Make up 1 in 4 Homeless – USATODAY. com. N. p. , 07 Nov. 2007. Web. 13 Nov. 2012. <http://usatoday30. usatoday. com/news/nation/2007-11-07-homeless-veterans_N. htm>. Norman, Joshua. “After War, Vets Fight for Jobs at Home. ” CBSNews. CBS Interactive, 4 Sept. 2012. Web. 13 Nov. 2012. <http://www. cbsnews. com/8301-201_162-57505057/after-war-vets-fight-for-jobs-at-home/>.
