In partnership with KJZZ’s Hear Arizona podcast series, Becoming a Veteran, producer Scott Bourque, an Afghanistan veteran, looks into some of the root causes of the most prominent issues facing the Arizona veteran community. The second installment of a three-part series on Arizona’s veteran community explores how military culture can make it nearly impossible for some service members to seek help. EDITOR'S NOTE: This story contains content that may not be suitable for all audiences.
Part 1:Failing as a civilian | Part 2: Struggling to get help | Part 3: Veterans Day
Thursday will mark the first Veterans Day since the U.S. ended its 20-year involvement in Afghanistan. It’s an emotional milestone for veterans, many of whom are struggling with the transition back to civilian life. And those struggles are not limited to combat veterans. Although fewer than 1 in 10 troops ever fire their weapons in combat, nearly 4 in 10 require mental health treatment when they return from service.
On TV and in the movies, when the American troops get into a firefight and neutralize the enemy, they often ride off into the sunset as heroes.
What the movies don’t show is the often gruesome job that former Army Staff. Sgt. Dustin Logan had to perform after the fighting was finished.
“The infantry guys, special-forces guys, SEALS, they get into a firefight. You essentially have to go clean it up,” Logan said.
As an Army logistics specialist, one of Logan’s duties on his Middle East deployments was to clean up after mass-casualty incidents.
“Whatever's leftover, you know, you see in the movies how they're always hauling their buddies away or this and that. Well, that's not always the case. And especially when it comes to the nationals, the Iraqis, Afghanis, wherever you may be, someone has to go clean that up,” he said. “And we're the ones who do it.”
The movies and news never showed this visceral and traumatizing duty. And the Army made it seem like collecting body parts and organs was really no big deal, Logan said. He repeatedly asked to speak to a mental health professional, and was told to: "Man up.”
“Hey, you know, real men just tough it out,” Logan said, describing the direction he was given. “Real men, just, they just deal with it. You don't need it. We're not going to send you to talk to nobody. But, uh, what you saw was totally normal.”
It wasn’t normal. He couldn’t tough it out. He did need help.
“And I just was asking over and over to go get help, and no one would help me,” he said. “Then I just had a complete … just completely lost it. Looked at my roommate, was like, ‘I feel like I should kill you right now.’”
The next day, he got into a pretty violent fight with someone. The medics drugged him, and he woke up in an Army psychiatric ward in Germany a day or so later.
Although the stigma around mental health disorders are disappearing in mainstream society, some of those stigmas still exist in the military. Mental health resources are available, and military policy officially allows service members access to mental health treatment. Despite this official policy, there is still a cultural stigma on receiving mental health treatment in the military, and that treatment can often have significant repercussions on a service member’s career.
For most of the military’s history, being diagnosed with a mental illness was a quick way to end a career — like Cpl. Max Klinger from the TV show M*A*S*H, who wore women’s clothing in an attempt to get kicked out for being mentally ill.
That’s not officially the case anymore — but service members are usually not allowed to carry a weapon or have access to classified material while receiving treatment. In an environment where promotions are competitive, treatment can, and often will, set a career back.
“What they're actually thinking is, ‘If I step forward, will this result in a career-ending consequence for me?’” Shauna Springer, Ph.D., a psychologist who works with military personnel and veterans, said. “That's the calculation they're making: ‘Will this affect my ability to continue to support my family, and retain this military career?’”
Everyday trauma
Army veteran Signa Oliver served as a captain and prosecutor in the Judge Advocate General corps in the late 1990s. Before going to law school, she was an enlisted soldier in an artillery battery. In those days, she said, mental health was rarely discussed.
“They would just either quietly get them out of the military, or just say, ‘Oh, you're not military material,’ depending on how [the mental health issue] presented,” Oliver said.
Often, soldiers with mental health disorders showed aggressive behavior; and in the military, aggression is a virtue. There was no reason to think anything was wrong.
“The people that are aggressive … sometimes were lauded,” Oliver said. “And you knew that those people were not right in their head and needed some help.”
Even thousands of miles away from an active combat zone, some everyday aspects of military life can be traumatic for some people who serve. Springer cited a study of 4 million service members that found no strong, positive correlation between combat service and suicide attempts.
“We have this story in our minds that it's the trauma of the horrors of exposure to war that is the trauma our nation's war fighters are fighting, and that's just not the case,” Springer said. “The veterans I've served have moral injuries, grief, survivor guilt — all of these things that we haven't focused as much attention on.”
Oftentimes, people join the military to escape a difficult situation at home. Many come from extreme poverty, suffer from abusive relationships, or have family members dealing with addiction or criminal behavior. The military offers job training, stability and a guaranteed way to escape those negative circumstances.
The problem, Springer says, is that the military environment is often rife for abuse like hazing, harassment and bullying.
“Many people who had childhood trauma wanted to become strong and become the protectors that they wish they had,” Springer said. “If they ended up getting hazed or bullied or sexually assaulted, or had other kinds of traumas within their groups that they circled with, that was really a double whammy and it was hard to come back from.”
“Many people who had childhood trauma wanted to become strong and become the protectors that they wish they had.” — Shauna Springer, Ph.D.
A 2020 report that the Department of Defense presented to Congress found that incidents of hazing — which the DOD defines as “initiations or rites of passage in which individuals are subjected to physical or psychological harm in order to achieve status or inclusion in a military or DoD civilian organization” — were steadily increasing. Most instances go unreported.
There were also more than 6,000 reported sexual assaults in the armed forces in 2020, according to the DOD’s annual Sexual Assault Prevention and Response (SAPR) report. Because sexual assault is usually vastly under-reported, officials estimated that about 20,000 service members experienced a sexual assault in 2018 — the last year the estimates were available.
When a person with underlying trauma joins the military, Springer says they’re expecting to become part of a culture of respect and professionalism.
“When you've had your trust violated from a young age, and then you go into this new organization or culture in the military, you're looking for a society that has rules and order,” Springer said. “You find that there's abuse of power, and it can really make it hard for you to believe the best in people, that there is justice, and that people will be brought to account for the things that they do.”
None of this is to say that everybody who serves experiences harassment, bullying, or sexual assault in the military — but since the armed forces are a dichotomy of society, these abuses of power are prevalent.
“Sometimes we forget that if abuses of power could happen in government settings, whether in our country or abroad, these kinds of things will happen in the military,” Springer said. “The military is a particular society where certain people are imbued with a lot of power. That can be really good if they are good men and women and good leaders.”
Since people can’t quit the military like a normal job, though, a bad leader can ruin someone’s life.
“When you have a toxic or a destructive leader, or somebody who abuses their power, it can do extreme and long lasting damage for those who are subjected to that,” Springer said. “They essentially can be like captives in that kind of a chain of command.”
Nobody Really Gets It
Doctors, nurses, and psychologists often enter the military as Captains and Majors to compensate for their advanced education. In a culture where rank matters, though, some junior enlisted service members often have a difficult time relating to their health care providers. They’re your doctor — but they’re also a superior officer.
“If you come in as a doctor, you kind of say to somebody in 10 different ways before the first word you speak, ‘I outrank you’,” Springer said. “That's not going to be a relationship that many military service members and veterans are interested in pursuing. Part of this issue of why military service members don't seek help is because there are very few people that seem to be able to build the kind of trust with them.”
Servicemembers who seek mental health treatment for issues not related to combat often face a degree of skepticism from both people within the military and the general public, too.
“There is gatekeeping in society about what [type of] trauma counts,” Springer said. “People put combat trauma in a different category than all the other traumas that service members can experience.”
Springer says this causes a lot of anguish for most veterans with mental health issues — if they’re not related to combat trauma, many veterans feel like they don’t deserve to seek treatment.
“There is a sacred trust there that we hold with those who take the oath of service,” Springer said. “And when that is betrayed, when they are hazed, bullied or sexually assaulted, that should absolutely be a trauma that we should care a great deal about healing and putting resources behind.”
Lifesaving, career-ending
After his initial hospitalization following his fight, Logan applied for and was eventually accepted into a long-term Army psychiatric care program at Fort Bliss in Texas.
“It was a very forward-thinking program,” Logan said. “You did art therapy, you did music therapy, you did massage therapy, you did Reiki, you did acupuncture, you did movement therapy. We did things like Quigong and tai chi and EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) and other high-intensity therapy sessions.”
There was just one catch. The Army wanted him out — and he had to agree not to fight his discharge.
“Going into this program, one of the deals was that you agreed for [medical discharge],” he said. “So, I was medically discharged for post-traumatic stress.”
Logan had almost a decade in the service and had risen to the rank of staff sergeant. The Army had spent tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of taxpayer dollars to recruit, train and take care of him. He wasn’t allowed to seek treatment until his condition became critical — and by then, it was too late.
“It's a double-edged sword. If we're going to give you care, you're out,” he said. “Hey, we're going to invest thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars for you to go to this two-month program. And then we're going to boot you.”
Fortunately, Logan received military health insurance — TRICARE — for life. TRICARE is often considered some of the best health insurance available, and Logan uses it to access top-tier psychotherapists. It only costs him about $24 each month, he said.
Other veterans — those who aren’t medically discharged — are left to deal with the Department of Veterans Affairs, which many say can be slow and bureaucratic, and is often described as being like getting health care at the DMV.
“The reason the VA is as bad as it is, is because it’s understaffed. [VA employees] went in there to take care of veterans, and they're just getting run through the dirt.” — Former Army Staff. Sgt. Dustin Logan
“They're overworked, they're underpaid, they're understaffed,” Logan said. “The reason the VA is as bad as it is, is because it’s understaffed. [VA employees] went in there to take care of veterans, and they're just getting run through the dirt.”
The process just for getting an appointment could take hours — and missing a call could set a veteran back for weeks or months.
“I missed the call from the VA to schedule the appointment. Now I've got to call back and call back and call back,” Logan said. “And then two months later, I finally got a call back for an appointment in six months. And if you don't take that appointment, then [they claim] you don't care, and your claim is denied.”
Veterans need to deliberately seek out treatment from the VA. Those who are discharged with undiagnosed mental health disorders often fall through the cracks. Without help, many fall into cycles of addiction, poverty and abuse.
“You get out, and you can't fit in with normal society,” Oliver said. “That's why I know we have a lot of veterans that are homeless, because they experienced things that exacerbated their mental health issues. And it was lauded in the military, and now society is (saying) ‘you can't do that. It's scaring the normies.’”
Logan believes that the federal government should disband the VA and give every veteran TRICARE like him.
“That should be available for everybody, like totally baseline,” Logan said. “We should close down the VA and just give everyone TRICARE.”
This story was adapted from the original Hear Arizona podcast series Becoming a Veteran ,now available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Part 1:Failing as a civilian | Part 2: Struggling to get help | Part 3: Veterans Day
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