Vets can lead fight on mental health stigma - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Vets can lead fight on mental health stigma

As Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., introduced former first lady Rosalynn Carter and her new book about mental health care, he predicted the people who will do the most to improve mental health care and reduce the stigma of getting that care across the nation: veterans.

At the Library of Congress Wednesday, Kennedy spoke of the “signature injuries” of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury — and how veterans talking about and combating stigma for those injuries could normalize mental health issues throughout the country.

As combat veterans grow increasingly comfortable with seeking care, civilians may, too, he said.

“It’s not about an issue,” he said. “It’s about personally wanting to help the people we love.”

Carter was in Washington, D.C., to promote her book, “Within Our Reach,” about the basics of mental health care and how communities could better serve the 25 percent of U.S. adults who deal with anxiety, depression, substance abuse disorders and other such issues every year.

Kennedy cited the work Carter has done to get new mental health treatment legislation enacted in 2008, as well as his late father’s work on the national health care reform legislation that passed this year.

Both changes, he said, will bring about an end to caps on how much insurance companies will pay for mental health care. In the past, a cap might mean a person could see a therapist only 10 times, while someone with cancer, for example, can continue treatment until the cancer is cured.

The two changes also mean insurance companies may not discriminate based on pre-existing conditions, such as PTSD or depression, to deny insurance or increase rates.

The models for those programs will be what has worked in the past for veterans, Kennedy said. That includes research, particularly in the area of neuroscience, because the military has mandated funding for those programs.

“More neuroscience can be done” through the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments than can be done at the National Institutes of Health, he said. “The more you do for veterans, the more you do for the community at large.”

During the past year, Carter has brought in community journalists for a training session about PTSD and TBI at the Carter Center in Atlanta so they are better able to report accurately on those issues, particularly in terms of how treatment can help and what communities can do to make their veterans stronger. This year’s Rosalynn Carter Symposium on Mental Health Policy also is tentatively scheduled to focus on military mental health issues.

Carter said she planned to meet with First Lady Michelle Obama.

“Michelle Obama said she was going to work on PTSD and I have some things I’m going to tell her,” Carter said.

Her advocacy for mental health issues began in 1971 as her husband ran for governor of Georgia. She stood in line with the rest of his potential voters, shook his hand, and then, “I said, ‘What are you going to do for people with mental illness when you become the governor of Georgia?’ ” she said.

He said he would put her in charge of his program, she recalled.

At the time, she said she knew too little to be put in charge of anything. But in 1975, she helped with a report about health care issues in the U.S. A 2002 president’s report on the same issue showed “the mental health care system was in a shambles,” she said, with much the same problems noted in her report 27 years earlier.

“I am frustrated and I am angry,” she said. “I’m frustrated because we know what to do. I wrote this book because I want everyone to know what I know and to get rid of the stigma” surrounding mental health issues and treatment.

Even as Carter came close to tears when thinking of all that still needs to be done, she said there has been great progress and there will be more.

“I think it’s going to be too strong now to stop,” she said.