Veteran Lays Out One Simple Thing That Congress Can Do to Help Treat PTSD

Every day, 22 Veterans commit suicide in America. As Donald Trump and many others have pointed out, we do a terrible job of taking care of our Vets. Many suffer from crippling depression, homelessness, and a crippling sense of purposelessness that makes a full life wholly unlivable. Simply put, this is unacceptable in a nation that is as wealthy and as engaged globally as the United States. If we're going to be sending so many men into harm's way, we'd better make damn sure that we're going to take care of them when they get back. Where do we start? One young Vet has a solution. As ABC reports:

As Cole Lyle testified before Congress today, his service dog, Kaya, was at his feet.

Lyle, a Marine veteran who served in Afghanistan, suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

After several years taking prescribed sleep aids and antidepressants and even contemplating suicide, he said he decided to try a different kind of therapy: trained service dogs.

Service dogs are not provided by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, so Lyle tried to get a dog through local nonprofit groups.

But the wait times were over a year, and Lyle said he didn’t feel like he had time to wait. He purchased Kaya and had her trained for PTSD symptoms by an Assistance Dogs International-accredited trainer. After spending $10,000 of his own money, he had the help he needed.“The bad days are less frequent than they have ever been,” Lyle told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Lyle testified before the committee about the benefits he’s experienced since having Kaya, including how Kaya knows to wake him up when he’s suffering from a nightmare. The dog has reinvigorated his life with purpose, he said.

Now, he’s speaking out in the hopes that the VA will change its policy.

Currently, the VA does not provide benefits for PTSD or mental health dogs because they say the dogs are not known to be effective in overcoming specific functional limitations in veterans with PTSD.

...A new bill, H.R. 4764, will direct the VA to carry out a five-year pilot program in which the agency will provide service dogs and veterinary health insurance to certain veterans who served on active duty on or after Sept. 11, 2001, and were diagnosed with, and continue to suffer from, PTSD.

Lyle's testimony is above, and it's pretty damn convincing. As we stated earlier, Veterans are dying every single day. Many more are suffering and on their way to suicide. This is unacceptable, and we should be throwing everything AND the kitchen sink at the problem. As Lyle notes, the price of an exhaustive government study that won't provide an answer until 2018 is the lives of many of our courageous young men and women, who are currently unable to get the help they need. A nation so quick to send young people off to fight in foreign lands shouldn't all of a sudden get deliberative and cheap when it comes to mitigating the consequences of those tours. If anecdotal evidence from combat veterans suggests that a therapy dog will help them recover, then Congress should move to fund an arrangement that funds and expedites the adoption process.

In the meantime, there are several ways you can help. Write your member and tell them to support H.R. 4764. You can write the members of the committee, and urge them to expedite the process, or you can support organizations like Paws for Veterans and Vets Adopt Pets.

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