I have been researching information regarding “Mental Health” issues and it’s impact on Veterans and Their Families.

A lot of folks in our community have been asking specific questions about this topic.

On the NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) website, there are fact sheets and information related to this topic.

Here is just a sampling of some of the information posted there:

• More than 100,000 combat veterans sought help for mental illness since the start of the war in Afghanistan in 2001, and about one in seven of those have left active duty since then, according to VA records collected through 2007. Almost one-half of those were PTSD cases.

• Mental health cases among war veterans, including PTSD, drug and alcohol dependency and depression, grew by 58 percent from 63,767 in 2006 to 100,580 in 2007, VA records show.

• A study released in 2007 stated that of 103,788 Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom (OEF/OIF) veterans seen at VA health care facilities, 25,658 (25 percent) received mental health diagnoses; 56 percent of whom had two or more distinct mental health diagnoses.

You can find an interesting video about the faces of homelessness here.