Addiction can affect veterans even more than the general population. Thus, the greatest honor we could give them on Armed Forces Day is the best quality support.
Lumina Recovery believes those who sacrifice their lives for our freedom deserve the best. While we uphold superior standards to all our patients, our community efforts especially prioritize rehab for military service members. Our specialized treatment program for veterans is designed to serve their needs in a supportive environment.
What is Armed Forces Day?
Armed Forces Day is a day of celebration where we honor all service members past and present who serve in our military. Taking place annually on the third Saturday of May, it’s also a time to reflect on the sacrifices they made and continue to make every day. With these sacrifices in mind, it’s also an important time to discuss their mental health and addiction support needs.
Specific Challenges for Veterans
A common and incorrect assumption many make is that veterans automatically get the best personalized therapy available. The truth is that an overwhelming number of veterans face many treatment obstacles and challenges with addiction.
Adapting to Civilian Life
When you’ve spent time in the service, adapting to civilian life is often a challenge that can drive many to substance use. This failure to adapt can stem from war-related trauma and mental struggles. Sadly, many veterans are unable to get the help they need to aid this transition.
Stigma Fears
Military service members may face fears of being judged for seeking help for addiction or mental health struggles. Though seeking help is nothing to be ashamed of, veterans may feel reluctant to open up about their addiction and underlying causes. This can stem from a variety of mental or physical traumas from their service days that they don’t wish to share with anybody. They may also harbor fear that needing this help marks them as weak or not living up to a military ideal. This can hinder from seeking help for their consequential addiction.
Service-Acquired Habits
It is not uncommon for people stationed out in the field to pick up a drinking habit. In fact, this can become a common social part of their life. But those acquired habits often transfer to their civilian life, where the capacity for personal harm can be even greater. The biggest problem with this is that the drinker may be under the predisposition that they don’t have a problem. This can not only drive a wedge between the individual and getting the vital treatment they need, but cause a downward spiral of self-harming alcohol addiction that worsens over time.
Escape from Reality
Addiction poses a difficult challenge to overcome, as it often represents a desire to escape traumatic memories of the past. This means that substance use can feel like a necessity to forget these past traumas. Mental health support specifically targets these thought patterns and can help replace them with constructive, positive patterns.
Lack of Veteran-Centered Addiction Rehab Resources
For people who require a truly unique and personalized approach to treatment, it can be incredibly difficult for a veteran to get the help they need. Service members need therapists who understand the origin of their addictions, potential complications of a military background, and enough about their experiences to recommend proper treatment.
Mental Health Challenges for Veterans
Veterans face arguably even greater mental health challenges than they do addiction challenges. These consist of, but are not limited to, the mental health challenges and obstacles below.
Survivor’s Guilt
Service members can bear witness to the loss of many war-related casualties. Whether it be close friends, family, or people in their division, witnessing violence or even loss of life can inflict severe mental trauma. Without proper treatment, this self-contained, sometimes concealed guilt can lead to highly negative thoughts or even self-harm.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders
PTSD is always a serious mental disorder for anybody. But in military service cases, it can be especially exacerbated. Military members may experience the death of other service members, taking the life of another person, or other violence-related traumas. PTSD is often the root of many mental health conditions developed by military members.
Finding Purpose After Service
For many who grow accustomed to the rigorous lifestyle and sense of purpose afforded by military life, civilian life can feel empty. Switching from service life to a relatively calm civilian life isn’t always therapeutic or healing to people looking accustomed to a more intense everyday existence. Coupled with the limited support to help veterans transition to a quieter retirement life, this transition can be mentally taxing.
Traumatic Brain Injuries
Better simplified as TBI, traumatic brain injuries are a common experience of active service members. This adds an additional layer to mental health battles in various ways. Depending on the type, severity, and affected regions, injuries to the brain can have profound trickle-down effects on mental health. Traumatic brain injuries can induce permanent deficiencies that require long-term treatment and maintenance. If you or someone you know has experienced a sustained brain injury, it’s important to get a mental health assessment as soon as possible.
Unique Triggers
Anxiety disorders among veterans have very unique, often overlooked triggers. Not all are linked to PTSD. However, very specific triggers can induce sudden anxiousness and anxiety that lead to panic attacks. Noises like car backfires or fireworks can mimic the sound of gunfire and induce tremors, fears, or panic. Unique anxiety triggers can even cause a severe mental health episode in extreme cases.
Combat or Service-Related Regrets
People in military service are often forced to make necessary decisions in the heat of the moment to protect themselves and others. Decisions (such as moving to take another person’s life) can be scarring to anybody, but service members may struggle with regret or internal conflict within a culture that normalizes or even glamorizes these actions. These regrets may continue to linger until an individual undergoes treatment to help them come to terms with their decisions.
Why Veterans Need Specialized Treatment?
Veterans require a unique treatment approach because of all the unique circumstances they encounter, which standard treatment may not be able to fully address.
Distinctive Exposure to High-Stress Situations
The stressors service members are exposed to can be very different from others experienced by civilians. Sadly, the mainstream culture of mental health does not always address their service-related mental and physical health battles in a meaningful way. Even if they are warned of the potential mental and physical harms, nothing can properly prepare people for the firsthand experiences of combat and enlisted life. Because of these unique circumstances, veterans require very specialized support, therapy, and distinct treatment approaches to help them heal.
Military Culture Understanding is Key
For the situations they encounter, veterans need specialized care from people who understand the distinctive culture of military life. This means having a therapist who grasps an understanding of military life, struggles, and potential complications. A general therapist with no insight into veteran backgrounds may have very little impact on the person’s ability to heal.
Connecting with Other Veterans Can Impact Progress
In line with a need for cultural understanding, nothing impacts veteran mental health more positively than connecting with other service members. That’s why generalized rehab doesn’t work the same way for service members who require a military connection to heal mentally. Connecting to other veterans can help add context to a person’s experiences and provide them with resources and support from people who have had the same experiences as them.
Different Origins For Addictions and Mental Health Problems
Mental health and addiction battles related to military service can be very different from those experienced by civilians. Veterans can be overlooked in the wider scheme of specialized treatment because public stigma assumes the standard treatments are enough. This assumption stems from the belief that their training prepares them mentally and physically for military life.
Limited Care Options
A primary reason for the dire need for specialized veteran-based treatment is because of the limited options afforded to most military members (especially those in more remote urban areas). Specialized treatment outside the realm of VA-offered therapy options can be very minimal, and many service members experience long wait times and bureaucratic obstacles to obtain the care they need. This means even more limited access to veteran-specific, specialized, and personalized treatment options. Financial support for treatments may require multiple applications, long wait times, or approval from higher authorities.
Receive Help for Addiction and Mental Health with Lumina Recovery
Whether you’re a civilian or a service member, Lumina Recovery offers individualized treatment programs for addiction to help people heal and flourish. We offer judgement-free treatment for addiction and mental illness at our multiple facilities across the United States.
Liberation from your addiction and mental health struggles begins here. Contact us to learn more.