veterans

Alan Harrison, E6 Boatswains Mate 1st Class, is a 21-year US Navy veteran who's taking part in the Guitars for Vets program at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Photo by Tim Evans

Guitars for Vets organizers Patrick Nettesheim and Dan Van Buskirk help veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder find hope again through music.

In the time it takes to read this story, another US serviceman or servicewoman will lose their life. It won't be to an IED on the battlefields of Iraq or Afghanistan. It will be to suicide on the battlefield of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and depression—right here at home. Every day, 19 soldiers take their own lives. Fifty percent of our homeless population is made up of veterans, and more than 250,000 veterans now suffer from PTSD. A 2004 Department of Defense study estimates that 17 to 20 percent of soldiers returning from Iraq “suffer from major depression, generalized anxiety, or PTSD." And according to a 2008 report cited in Tears of a Warrior: A Family's Story of Combat and Living with PTSD—a book the Veterans Administration uses in its PTSD treatment program— roughly 40,000 troops have been diagnosed since 2003.

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