U.S. military personnel are trained to go into combat and face deadly dangers, but it turns out that adjusting to life after leaving active duty can sometimes pose greater perils.
That was the message that Shawn Huber brought to the Jan. 23 luncheon meeting of the Rotary Club of Lutz at the Heritage Harbor Country Club.
Huber, an ambassador for Mission 22, talked about that organization’s efforts to reduce the number of veterans who lose their lives to suicide.
An estimated 20 veterans die by suicide each day, according to research by the department of Veterans Affairs.
It’s a problem that led to the creation of Mission 22, said Huber, noting that he went to high school with one of the group’s original founders.
“What Mission 22 is looking for is financial donations to get these guys through treatment,” he said. It also needs ambassadors to help organize local events.
So many wounded warriors have injuries that cannot be seen, Huber said.
“People are like: ‘How do you know when people are going through this?’
“You don’t.
“If you’re missing an arm or a leg, I know you’ve been injured, right? But, if you don’t show any outward sign of injury — it’s all internal — people pass it off as if there is nothing wrong with you,” Huber said.
“The thing about military families — the wives and children know that Dad comes and goes. “What happens when Dad comes home and stays home. They don’t know how to handle them,” Huber said. “They try to ‘fix’ them.”
Veterans leave the service, where they were part of a team and had a specific role, to return to society, where they are no longer part of that team and can’t find a job that correlates with the one they left, Huber said.
“You were trained to do a job, and that job doesn’t exist,” Huber said.
Many are suffering from PTSD, too.
“They start drinking. They’re doing drugs,” he said.
“There are people that I’ve talked to — who have been on between 25 and 47 different drugs at once,” Huber added.
Some people who end their life by suicide choose that route, he said, because “in their minds, sometimes, this is the easiest way for them not put a burden on their friends and their family,” he said.
When someone ends his or her life, people often wonder: “What is the one thing that pushes them over the edge?” Huber said. “It’s not one thing.”
And, it’s often not easy to tell who might need some help, Huber added.
“You very rarely will find out who in your neighborhood is coming back from the military, unless they’re damaged physically and they’re missing a limb,” he said.
“We want to create awareness,” Huber added.
“What I’ve volunteered to do is that when people are ready and they want to make a change in their lives, I take them from where they are, to better.
Mission 22 has two treatment programs that focus on Traumatic Brain Injury and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The goal is not to medicate and mask the problems our veterans are facing, but to heal them. The creation of these Mission 22 Healing Projects will allow us to support even more veterans through groundbreaking treatments.
One program can be done at home, and the other is done at a treatment facility in North Carolina.
For specifics about each program, visit Mission22.com.
Published February 7, 2018
