Introduction
The Gap in Healthcare Delivery for Military Veterans
Military men are a group of individuals who are required and responsible for guarding a country’s borders and intervening in conflicts. The globe is constantly at odds, and the military and police exchange gunfire and other explosives, which substantially impact the health of military veterans. The lives of military veterans are of particular significance because these are a group of individuals who have the responsibility of guarding countries’ boundaries against external attacks. For that reason, each country needs to manage the health of military veterans to enhance their productiveness and alertness. With the present disparities in access to mental disease, the United States risks losing its most experienced warriors due to trauma and depression. The recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have traumatized US soldiers because they observed their fellow military men being slaughtered in one way or another without intervening. Others are left with severe injuries and worry because they cannot execute their jobs due to unrecoverable circumstances.
As a result, this article looks at the healthcare system’s neglect of war veterans’ mental health difficulties. Furthermore, the report will look into the problems that healthcare providers face while dealing with the mental diseases of military commanders. According to Haag et al. (2021), overcoming healthcare barriers in adequately addressing military mental health has disadvantaged many military officers in the United States and throughout the world. As such, this paper seeks to explore the constraints that impede fair military access to affordable mental health care and the incapability of healthcare to address military veterans’ healthfully.
History
The inability of healthcare institutions to effectively treat the mental and psychological status of many military members stems from a lack of understanding of how to manage these illnesses. According to Haag et al. (2021), mental problems among war veterans were first observed in US service members who served in World War II. As stated by Haag et al. (2021), many soldiers returning from World Conflict II needed mental health treatments to help them cope with the effects of the war. Aside from being traumatized by bizarre events on the battlefield, these groups were also fighting on other fronts, such as socioeconomic challenges and getting their families back together after years of combat. According to recent research, Iraqi and Afghanistan soldiers also destroyed the target group after exchanging brutal gunfire and other explosives (Haag et al., 2021). However, it was shown that massive unemployment and inadequate educational assistance are the key factors that may have been addressed to assist veterans in accessing fair mental health treatments. On the same point, psychotherapy and the need to enhance veterans’ mental health are two more alternatives for closing the care delivery gap.
Inadequate access to mental health treatments for military veterans has historically grown over the decades due to delayed rehabilitation of psychological conditions owing to other unaddressed concerns. According to Dang et al. (2022), war veterans’ inequities in access to mental health treatments have been exacerbated by the target group’s failure to seek medical care from professionals. The findings support the notion that inequities in mental health treatment for veterans are not a recent phenomenon but have evolved through time and are now entrenched in this environment.
Socio-Economic Background
Military men defend a country’s borders against external threats and uphold law and order. According to Dang et al. (2022), various factors lead men to become warriors, and each individual has a particular motivation. Recent studies suggest a significant frequency of mental health concerns among military veterans. Dang et al. (2022) state that most military members join forces for patriotic reasons. Others joined the army because of financial incentives and educational perks, while others did so because of family traditions. Furthermore, many soldiers in military organizations are high school graduates with no plans but wish to join the army as a source of work (Morey et al., 2021). Confrontations between two opponents, on the other hand, are a global affair that results in both physical and mental hardship. According to Morey et al. (2021), modern military soldiers are surrounded by suicide bombers and other modern explosives that, when detonated, cause injury and death. Furthermore, many military troops suffer from melancholy, anxiety, family crises, and a loss of purpose in life.
Healthcare Affected by the Gap in Access
The lack of adequate military access to mental health care causes considerable psychological strain, disproportionately impacting individual military members. According to the “US Department of Veteran Affairs” (2022), at most 20 out of every 100 military servicemen who participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIP) were diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder (Morey et al., 2021). Hurried and anxious emotions often alter soldiers’ psychological states. According to other study investigations, a significant percentage of troops who served in the Gulf Battle had long-term defects due to their engagement in the war. Furthermore, studies conducted during the Vietnam War in the 1980s found that around 15 percent of the veterans had evidence of posttraumatic disorder (Morey et al., 2021). The absence of competent specialists to attend to veterans has exacerbated military men’s limited access to mental health treatments (Morey et al., 2021). This is supported by a RAND analysis from 2016, which predicted that the health of military members will be determined between 2014 and 2024. This is because many troops were left to deal with their experiences alone, without the assistance of professionals.
Potential Implications
Effective mental health care indicates that a population will live a happy life. As a result, sustaining the military group’s mental health by providing fair access to mental health treatments offers a better life and possibilities for the target group. As the recorded history of the issue continues, the gap will severely limit the output of military forces (Morey et al., 2021). Furthermore, if the seen mental disturbance among the military group is not adequately treated, there is a significant potential for posttraumatic problems. Intrusive memories, flashbacks, destructive emotions, avoidance, and concentration difficulties are all symptoms of mental diseases and the start of posttraumatic disorders (Morey et al., 2021). Further study has connected posttraumatic stress disorder to veterans’ inability to perceive their need for medical treatment.
Existing Initiatives
APHA Healthcare Initiative
The fundamental goal of this effort is to provide and make medical benefits available to those honorably released or discharged from the military unit, particularly retirees. This program includes suicide prevention, mental health, accountability, and wellness regulations, as well as discriminatory obligations for mental care for military veterans (APHA, 2022, para. 1). APHA handles mental health concerns for the military, navy, and air forces, increasing their access to mental health specialists to limit the worrying situation.
Goals of the Initiative
The APHA effort aims to reduce inequity in military access to mental health services by altering the eligibility criterion for care services to include more excellent coverage. However, when it comes to military veteran qualifying, it is unclear. For example, only veterans with a 50 percent disability and without a job are eligible for this service (APHA, 2022). Another purpose of the effort is to improve health expert retention by monitoring and controlling their levels of exhaustion and burnout, which have been identified as the most significant barriers to successful handicapped care. This ensures that the healthcare system has active employees committed to ensuring veterans’ mental health.
Circumstances for Development
This program arose in response to the growing number of mentally ill people in the military. According to APHA (2022), the high prevalence reported on several retirees influenced the endeavor to regulate the posttraumatic problems that military personnel face after hanging up their boots (APHA, 2022, para. 5). Following the aftermath of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the US Congress and Service Department devised rules to resolve issues that military personnel encountered (APHA, 2022). The project was also created to provide a foundation for arguing about mental illness among veterans because no policies existed to fight on their behalf. The absence of such policies prevented military veterans from getting mental healthcare treatments quickly and, for that reason, they struggled with traumas and depression, significantly affecting their health and public lives.
Resources Required
Meeting the care needs of mentally ill veterans necessitates significant resources, making APHA’s ambition a reality. According to APHA (2022), employees are the primary resource that improves the successful treatment of mentally ill veterans. Fatigue and burnout plague were the significant challenges that jeopardized experts’ ability to deliver appropriate mental health treatments to combat veterans’ mental conditions (APHA, 2020). In that scenario, the federal and state governments are investing in their workers’ varied medical specialists to bridge the gap that prevents veterans from receiving mental health screenings and counseling. Another issue that has been discovered to impede military access to services is insufficient funding to fund the necessary processes. According to APHA (2022), economic hardship and recession have put a more significant burden on the populace, harming their brains due to stress and sadness. The government should provide financial incentives for efficient initiative implementation.
Improvement
The APHA initiative’s major flaw is that it does not provide free insurance to all veterans. Similarly, veterans must dig deeper into their pockets to obtain additional benefits not provided by the initiative. As a result, APHA’s coverages must undergo significant adjustments to benefit the military soldiers as their mental health and well-being are concerned. It must, for example, contain more extensive insurance coverages that enable veterans to undergo more comprehensive therapy, such as psychiatric assessment. Therefore, the disparity in mental health service to military personnel would be bridged, allowing the issue of conversation to be addressed. This is true because, with comprehensive coverages, the military troops can access the services regardless of financial capabilities and, in the long run, enhance military soldiers’ activeness.
Regulation
Current Regulation
Addressing the gap in veteran mental health requires sustainable legislation and regulations to successfully care for mentally ill and traumatized warriors. Telemedicine is one such technology that has been discovered to assist clinicians in bridging the gap that prevents effective military health care. The APHA project also has rules that help to reverse the inequity that exists when it comes to veteran mental health. The first regulation eradicates disparities in veterans, allowing all soldiers to receive medical care without prejudice. To provide equal treatment for veterans, appropriate auditing of scheduling and selection of the best personnel with essential concerns for the military community is also required (APHA, 2022). As a result, these policies, in conjunction with the program, tend to foster an atmosphere where all veterans can seek therapy to improve their health.
Regulatory Level
The APHA policy mentioned above necessitates the participation of the public, federal, and national governments. The government must provide and assure the availability of the essential resources to address veteran mental health. Furthermore, the government and the country as a whole should take steps to address post-traumatic stress disorder, homelessness, and depression. In that regard, enough medical specialists and nurses should be deployed in military units to care for injured soldiers, especially those with mental disorders, to help handle their conditions.
Conclusion
Veterans are not receiving adequate drugs for their mental health. The ongoing conversation has highlighted and outlined healthcare systems’ limitations when treating veterans’ mental health concerns. The primary cause of mental disease within the target population is prolonged exposure to harmful events while doing their duties. As a result, the government should provide healthcare facilities with the resources required to close the gap that prohibits soldiers from receiving medical treatment. This paper has identified a lack of awareness and inadequate resources as the main barriers to veterans’ health services.
References
APHA. (2022). Removing barriers to mental health services for veterans.
Dang, S., Muralidhar, K., Li, S., Tang, F., Mintzer, M., Ruiz, J., & Valencia, W. (2022). The gap in willingness and access to video visit use among older high-risk veterans: Cross-sectional study. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 24(4), 36-70.
Haag, A., Cone, E., Wun, J., Herzog, P., Lyon, S., & Nabi, J. et al. (2021). Trends in surgical volume in the military health system—A potential threat to mission readiness. Military Medicine, 186(7-8), 646-650.
Morey, B., Chang, R., Thomas, K., Tulua, ‘., Penaia, C., & Tran, V. et al. (2021). No equity without data equity: Data reporting gaps for native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders as structural racism. Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, 47(2), 159-200.