What if you were having nightmares every night? What if you were paranoid that someone was going to invade your house? You would be living in a real life nightmare. Your best friend were on patrol talking to each other, until you hear a distant, crack, before seeing a bullet zip through his cold skull. His eyes roll back as he collapses in front of you.These kind of things will always stay in your mind, making it hard to live a normal life after the traumatic event. Jonathon Gilbert, a US soldier saw his unit in the caravan ahead of him roll of a bridge, 2 people were killed, another decapitated. Gilbert helped clean up the body parts... He committed suicide. A soldier was convicted of waterboarding his own daughter because she didn’t know her ABCs. It's terrible, ludacris, overall, insanity. Why is this happening? Why have we not put an end to this? No one wants to hear these terrible stories! And what is the army doing about it?

One day in your cafeteria you experience a suicide bomber walk in and then blow himself up, sending bits of flesh everywhere. You’re friends, fellow soldiers, their body parts scattered and all over you, then having to clean up the body parts... would you forget a week later? Definitely not. This actually happened. And the air was filled with the stench of burnt flesh. This soldier was diagnosed with PTSD and was traumatized for the rest of his life, and it made it hard to live for him. Imagine your wife, constantly being awaked by you screaming in your sleep, your constant anger, you would be yelling at her all the time, everything setting you off edge. One soldier was in a long line, got so mad he punched a wall, breaking his hand. You would be paranoid and would always be scared. This is not only effecting the victim, but also victimizing the people you love and who you live with. This is a burden that we cannot hold.

Rob Withrow was a great soldier until he got back from his deployment from Iraq. He has screwed up - and he’s screwed up as well. He’s tried to commit suicide 4 times since his return. He was hospitalized and given many drugs and was addicted to pain pills to numb out the month he spent in Iraq. But now, believe it or not, the army wants to redeploy him... what is wrong with this situation...? A million different things. They also want to court martial him over there! He’s received multiple article 15s - which is the army’s form of non-judicial punishment. He was a sergeant and is now a private. Medical records show he’s struggling with depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic-stress-disorder. To top it all off, the icing on the cake is that if he is discharged for misconduct he will lose benefits for his family, which is already facing a financial crisis related to his demotions. This is one of many examples of what the military is doing to these people. It brings up the question of how the military is handling mental health problems... and it has to be changed.

According to the 2005 VA study 20 percent of Iraq veterans suffer from some sort of psychological disorder. And 18 percent of Afghanistan veterans suffer from some sort of psychological disorder. A 2003 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine said about 1 in 6 soldiers returning from Iraq suffered from PTSD. Interviews with those at risk showed that only 23 percent to 40 percent sought professional help, most typically because they feared it would hurt their military careers. This is a large number, and only 23-40 percent seek help. TBI, which stands for Traumatic brain injury, is in 1.4 million Americans. And the National Institutes of Health, which is the largest government sponsor, uses $80 million to help fund research....80 million out of 28 billion. That’s ridiculously small. 50,000 people die from TBI every year. And the research is mostly focused on mild TBI.

You kill 4 enemy soldiers inside your tank at the dead of night. Gunning them down with burst after burst as they pop their head up into your thermal vision. Orders are, keep one alive, so you shoot one and injure him, pin him down for 6 hours till light. He dies, blood loss, you review what happened...the helplessness he must have felt. The family comes, sees the body and breaks down weeping. Their son, tortured. Dead. Your devastated, what have you done? You took this woman's son away from her. You have changed. It comes back every night. The ambiens you swallow to even be able to sleep. The screams that break the silence night after night, waking up sweaty and panting. Your anxiety, the depression. Suicide is an answer in your mind. Your daily life is ruined from this traumatic experience. You don't know what to do... There's drugs, alcohol, pain medication. It ruins your life, one day at a time. And what does the military do?

The military redeploys you, they help but accomplish little. They pour more money into everything else, with a max of 28 BILLION dollars, only 80 million into traumatic brain injuries ( TBI ). Thats not enough and we should be providing more money for TBI. This is something that cannot be ignored, the army is not doing enough. The people who suffer from this is too many to be ignored. There has been a rise in PTSD since 2000, and someones future with PTSD is small, and most victims don't get to achieve much.

Let’s fix this.