The White House said Monday that President Obama believes veterans aren’t weak if they ask for help to deal with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, in reaction to Donald Trump’s suggestion that veterans who commit suicide aren’t “strong” enough to handle what they’ve seen in combat.
“I think the president answered this quite directly” during a CNN town hall with service members last week, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said when asked about Trump’s remarks.
“The commander in chief made a firm declaration that it is not a sign of weakness to get help,” Earnest said. “In fact, it’s a sign of character and a sign of strength to ensure that you’re taking care of yourself.”
“The president has acknowledged the cultural barriers in the military to changing attitudes” about PTSD,” Earnest said, noting that the military has made “some progress on this.” Earnest also noted that Obama has “ramped up resources at the Veteran Affairs Department” to treat veterans who have sustained “unseen wounds in combat.”
“The president also acknowledged the herorism that we’ve seen from our men and women in uniform who have served this country with extreme courage, and in some cases, unimaginable circumstances and have gotten help for seen and unseen wounds,” he said. “[They] are the picture of resilience, and that resilience inspires a lot of pride in the minds of a lot of Americans — it certainly does in the minds of those at the White House.”
While Trump was speaking at a national security town hall in Herndon, Va., a former military staff sergeant asked him about the importance of faith-based programs for veterans suffering from “military mental and behavioral issues.”
“Look, we need that so badly,” Trump responded. “And when you talk about the mental health problems when people come back from the war and combat, they see things that maybe a lot of the folks in this room have seen many times over, and you’re strong and you handle it, but a lot of people can’t handle it.”
In 2012, the VA launched an initiative to hire an additional 1,600 mental health professionals, and two years later announced another effort to further augment the ranks.
But in April, an assistant inspector general for the VA, Larry Reinkemeyer, testified to Congress that the agency struggles to attract and retain sufficient mental health workforce capacity in order to support improving mental health care nationwide. In late September, several media outlets reported that more than one-third of calls to a VA suicide hotline roll over into voicemail, citing emails from the hotline’s former director.
Greg Hughes, the former director of the VA’s Veterans Crisis Line, attributed the roll-over program to crisis line staffers who are requesting to leave work early and are handling fewer than five calls per day before leaving before their shift ends.
