Veteran Mental Health Quotes

It's easier to get people to talk to you if you're a vet and you want to interview a vet about war. Sometimes they open up a little bit easier.

The responsibility for keeping our commitments to veterans falls on the federal government.

Our country has made a promise to our veterans: if you serve your country, then 'we've got your six.' We will have your back for life. I will always fight for the more than 250,000 veterans here in Arkansas.

I didn't hear anybody talking about the plight of a soldier coming back home and what he'd gone through. That was why I wrote about that stuff. If somebody else had done it, I probably wouldn't have touched the subject.

We noted the psychological problems facing many of the returning from Iraq veterans - of the 700,000 returning veterans, more than a 100,000 have been diagnosed with problems, but the numbers are likely to get worse, as those with multiple deployments return. We should have valued the loss of life as a result of these suicides, using the same procedures we used for the loss of those who died in combat.

We do a very good job at fixing broken bodies but not such a great job at healing broken minds with our returning veterans.

If somebody in a family is in service, the whole family is in service. I didn't know that. I didn't know our veterans were being deployed seven, eight, nine, 10 times. It's inhumane.

In World War One, they called it shell shock. Second time around, they called it battle fatigue. After 'Nam, it was post-traumatic stress disorder.

America's trying to do the best for its veterans.

When you have 8,000 veterans a year committing suicide, then you have a serious problem.

We are dealing with veterans, not procedures; with their problems, not ours.

I would just say there is one misperception of our veterans, and that is they are somehow damaged goods. I don't buy it.

My brother-in-law, Chuck, whom I have known since we were teenagers, is a disabled veteran who was wounded while fighting with the marines in Vietnam. I've been around to observe how the war affected his life and the problems that veterans have, and I knew for a long time that I wanted to write a song about Vietnam.

My greatest disappointment is that I believe that those of us who went through the war and tried to write about it, about their experience, became messengers. We have given the message, and nothing changed.

Veteran' is an exercise in editing because there is a lot of moments I took out and some that almost didn't make it.

The thing is, a lot of our vets come home and they feel displaced, and they don't feel like their voice matters, so for me to be a spokesman and have that honor to educate America about who we are and what we are, it's like I'm doing my job.

My father was a Marine who fought in the Pacific in WW II. He was a very tough guy, but after the war, he lived his life in a quiet and reserved manner because he had nothing to prove. I know now that he internalized his war experience.

When people come back from war and combat and they see things that maybe a lot of the folks in this room have seen many times over, and you're strong and you can handle it, but a lot of people can't handle it.

The simple truth is that every veteran has his or her own unique story, and there's no single narrative about the issue of veterans finding civilian employment. And no single solution.

I think each veteran's soul has something that it needs to say. I know from my own personal traumas, it's very hard to know what that is. But when I'm watching someone else struggle, it's not as confusing for me, 'cause it's not my struggle, so I can help identify that.

I am super proud of being an American, but we fail our veterans every day.

Veterans' issues have always spoken to me.

Some 70% to 80% of all who join the military will return to the civilian workforce. They'll return to communities, and one of the things I've worried about is the increasing disconnect between the American people and our men and women in uniform. We come from fewer and fewer places. We're less than 1% of the population.

It's quite a traumatic thing for a lot of our veterans that come back... You're in a war zone, you're dodging IED's and bullets one day and a couple days later you're back in society again with a bunch of people that have no idea of what you've been through.

We need to look at how we can better fortify our force protection at military installations. But also, how can we deal with these mental health issues with our returning veterans? And our suicide rate in the military is twice as high as the average population.