The Forgotten Veteran
Timothy Pena • October 8, 2024
Who is the forgotten veteran?
Who is The Forgotten Veteran?
The Forgotten Veteran is incarcerated or homeless.
The Forgotten Veteran most likely experienced trauma while serving.
The Forgotten Veteran has unresolved issues with family & friends.
The Forgotten Veteran struggles with lingering drug/alcohol abuse issues and suffers mental illness.
The Forgotten Veteran struggles with suicide ideation.
The Forgotten Veteran is in the shadows but wants to be seen.
In 1980, while serving with the Navy Seabees and attached to an amphibious assault ship USS San Bernadino (LST-1189) in the Persian Gulf during the Iranian Hostage Crisis, Marine Pfc. Bradley Johnson received a bad letter from home, obtained an M-16 from the armory sentry, and committed suicide if front of us. While the suicide was bad enough, the helicopter blew Johnson’s brain matter and blood all over the deck and gear providing a stark reminder for the rest of the WESTPAC. Following years of struggling with PTSD, mental illness, and suicide ideation, a total mental health breakdown after an arrest for DUI and marijuana possession in October 2014 was the turning point but it wasn’t until 2015 that I got into treatment at the Phoenix VA Hospital. In 2016 I filed a claim for VA Disability, and in 2017 was awarded a 70% VA Disability rating for PTSD. After years of DUI’s resulting in years of jailtime and prison, the diagnosis provided me with some answers to what I was suffering and that the struggles I encountered over the past 35 years were real. The diagnosis also provided a path to mental health success and as a result, provided me an avenue of healing and treatment still to this day at the Manhattan VA Hospital.
In just a couple of years, founders of Military Veterans in Journalism have put their organization on the map for journalists.
The taxpayer is burdened with the cost of the VA system for a veteran, then while the veteran is in prison, then again when the veteran starts over
Since I am low-income with only my VA Disability, I will need to get housing vouchers.
It is estimated that for each ACI inmate worker, a community family loses a $25 an hour wage job
In training materials recently obtained by the ACLU of Arizona, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office (MCAO) refers to the people it prosecutes using the slur “crazy”
According to The Center for Health and Justice at TASC (CHJ) , across the United States, criminal justice systems are managing record numbers of people with rates of substance use and mental health disorders that are exponentially higher than those of the general public. Now more than ever, and often with strong public support, legislators, prosecutors, judges, court administrators, corrections and probation officials, and the jurisdictions they serve are responding with community-based diversion alternatives, often incorporating substance use and mental health service or program components. The collective scope and variety of existing diversion programs across the country reflect a policy and political context that is increasingly receptive to the benefits of safely diverting individuals – who in many cases are drug-involved or have mental health problems or both – out of costly jail or prison incarceration, and away from conviction and its lifelong collateral consequences, into programs that more effectively and efficiently address the behavioral health conditions underlying their criminal behaviors.