These days, we talk incessantly about living well and achieving life balance, yet we wear masks to hide our pain. No matter who you are, true wellness can never be achieved behind these and without facing our pain and stressors.

We civilians need to do a better job understanding and supporting our service members who have given all to protect our country. We can shift our thinking from problematic to positive when we think about hiring, counseling or dealing with our service members.

It's important for people who suffer with trauma to get the treatment that's appropriate to their unique experiences and that is sensitive to the specific symptoms they are struggling with at the moment.

Getting veterans to the help they need is imperative. It is also valuable for us to have an understanding of the many factors that lead to increased suicide risk among veterans.

There are several studies claiming a 70-percent improvement rate for returning warriors who are treated for combat stress with various cognitive behavioral therapies and/or prolonged exposure strategies. But this is a misleading number.

Those of us who have never gone to war -- and today that means about 90 percent of us -- how able are we to imagine it?

Not a day goes by that I don't think about some way, shape, or form of how those events could have been prevented. That's the crux of behavioral health.