A veteran is a former member of the armed forces who was not dishonorably discharged from service in the active military, naval, or air service. Active military service is full-time, other than active duty for training, as a member of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, or as a commissioned officer of the Public Health Service, Environmental Science Services Administration or National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or its predecessor, the Coast and Geodetic Survey. This definition includes peacetime active duty military personnel as well as those who served in combat. In some instances, it also applies to those who were injured during training in part-time units like the National Guard or reserves (DVA, 2024, October 7).
The U.S. Census Bureau, relying on the 2022 American Community Survey, provides a tally of 16.2 million military veterans in the United States, representing 6.2% of the total civilian population 18 and older. Just over 10% of those veterans are women. World War II veterans comprise 0.8% of the country’s veterans as of 2022 (USDOL, 2024).
Additionally, 4.1% of today’s veterans served in the Korean War, 33.6% in the Vietnam War, 24.4% in the first Gulf War (August 1990 to August 2001), and 26.3% in the second Gulf War, beginning September 2001 (US Census Bureau, 2023). According to a report from the U.S. Department of Labor, in August of 2023, there were more than million veterans with a service-connected disability in the civilian non-institutional population 18 years and older. Of those, 1,362,000 had a disability rating of 60% or higher (USDOL, 2024).
In 2023, the VA updated its 1959 mission statement, which was, “to fulfill President Abraham Lincoln’s promise ‘to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan.’” The new mission statement is, “To fulfill President Lincoln’s promise to care for those who have served in our nation’s military and for their families, caregivers, and survivors.” The updated verbiage is designed to reflect a commitment to the 600,000 women veterans, 50,000 veteran caregivers, 600,000 veteran survivors, and millions of veterans who did not serve in combat. It is also supposed to represent veterans from a variety of racial and cultural backgrounds and those from the LGBTQ+ community.
An Executive Order, Improving Access to Mental Health Services for Veterans, Service Members, and Military Families, was issued by President Barack Obama in 2012. It created the Interagency Task Force (ITF) on Military and Veterans Mental Health and tasked it with providing an annual review of agency actions, defining specific goals and metrics to aid in measuring progress, and making additional recommendations to improve mental health and substance use disorder treatment services for U.S. Veterans, service members, and their families. The ITF is a collaborative effort across the Departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, and Health and Human Services. It works to ensure that service members, veterans, and their families have access to needed mental health services and support (SAMHSA, 2024).
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), provides technical assistance to a variety of interagency teams that are working to advance the mental health of service members, veterans, and their families and caregivers. It serves as a clearinghouse for information about trends in behavioral health treatments and who is providing what kind of treatment in which states and territories. It also consults with providers and trains them on how to deliver treatments in coordination among civilian, military and veteran service systems.
Key ITF recommendations include advancing suicide prevention, effective policy around substance use disorders, tracking outcomes, and enhancing community partnerships. The task force is responsible for the following activities (SAMHSA, 2023):
- Providing an annual review of agency actions
- Defining specific goals and metrics to aid in measuring progress
- Making additional recommendations as appropriate to the President.
According to SAMHSA, “Efforts need to be expanded, plans need to be refreshed, and lessons learned need to be shared. At this critical time, we must all work together to improve the capacity of our civilian behavioral health service system to serve service members, veterans, and their families. This can be accomplished by ensuring providers are informed on military culture and adopting promising, best, and evidenced-based practices. Service members, veterans, and their families deserve the highest level of care that can be delivered through an easy-to-navigate, coordinated system that allows them to access quality behavioral health care in their communities” (SAMHSA, 2024).