When we make decisions in life, we don't have the benefit of hindsight, and we just go ahead and do the best we can with what we have. That is how Chris Kyle lived: doing the best he could, with what he had, to help someone else.
According to Pentagon figures, 349 military service members took their lives in 2012. Every one of these deaths exacts an incalculable toll -- from the victim's families, from their military units, and from our society.
Those of us who tackled the AIDS epidemic head-on are facing a new plague -- the one that likely killed Spencer Cox. As yet unnamed, it manifests in aimlessness, depression, broken relationships, substance abuse, unsafe sex and suicide.
Newscasters and reporters, do us a favor and remember that not all harm shows up in the form of an outer visible wound.
Those veterans returned home to a bleak landscape of flashbacks of rape, post-traumatic stress, and displacement. These are brave, courageous people, survivors of military sexual assault, and I am committed to helping them rebuild their lives.
Might it be that war isn't something we wage, so much as a force that wages us? And if that's the case, it doesn't particularly matter whether we win or lose because it's not in our control anyway, at least not in the way we think it is.
When my husband left, I trembled for a year. That's not just some figurative language used to convey emotion; I literally shook. For a year.
When we talk about a healthy population, we need to remember that a very important focus needs to be on the health of our returning veterans. We need to develop and implement programs for the veterans designed to improve stress management and encourage healthy outcomes.
We need more money to help vets and we need it now. We need to open the floodgates of medical care -- even if it means government waste and abuse. The cost of our penny pinching is too high.
When PTSD transfers from the battlefield to the home, this disorder quickly becomes a family affair. So set an extra plate at dinner tonight; PTSD is joining you.
For the last decade, we've seen tens of thousand of soldiers return home with injuries, many of whom had serious brain or spinal damage. But these numbers only account for the wounds we can see -- and it's the damage outside our field of vision that's sometimes the most lethal.
Clearly, there is a gap in the mental health care that we are providing for those who serve in the military. Why has media the remained silent on this topic, rather than exposing the underlying root causes of this wide scale tragedy?
It's not just movies that lie at the root of our fascination with casinos. For some of us, it's the promise of striking it rich with that one lucky poker hand or dice roll. And as a matter of fact, in neurological terms, gambling is its own sort of drug.
Restoration after a sudden trauma is not easy, but it is possible. In fact, you can even learn how to surf your tsunami, moving through it with skill and grace.
Stopping veteran suicide, unemployment and sexual abuse all starts with PTSD. By striving to provide holistic, stigma-free care for our warriors, we can take a large step toward helping them heal their invisible wounds.
Yoga. With this celebrity fitness secret now going mainstream, even our veterans are hitting the yoga mat. Why? To treat their Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It's the latest proof that, sometimes, a harmonious brain-body connection is the best medicine.
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