Maxton, North Carolina — Sharjuan Burgos is taking a leap of religion, skydiving with the Army’s Golden Knights Parachute Group. But it surely’s nothing in comparison with the leap the retired Army main took when she sought assist for post-traumatic stress dysfunction after deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.
“The toughest half for me was looking for psychological well being remedy the primary time,” Burgos advised CBS News. “Typically making that first step right into a facility and even simply looking for remedy is the toughest factor you will ever do.”
Practically 12% of feminine veterans expertise PTSD — virtually double the speed of their male counterparts, based on the American Journal of Preventive Drugs. Girls even have greater charges of melancholy and consuming issues, based on Navy Drugs. In 2018, the suicide price for feminine veterans was virtually twice that of girls who didn’t serve, RAND Company discovered.
These Golden Knights jumps are about elevating consciousness of the psychological well being challenges ladies veterans face.
It is one thing former prisoner of warfare Jessica Lynch is aware of firsthand. Lynch was taken prisoner after her convoy was ambushed by Iraqi troops in 2003 and rescued by U.S. Special Forces days later. She advised CBS News it was “completely” laborious to ask for assist.
“I felt like my story had been so form of well-known that I did not need to, form of, add on high of what I already went by means of,” she stated.” It was most likely 10 years earlier than I even got here out and stated that I had PTSD. … I by no means actually spoke about these internal demons that eat at you.”
Since retiring from the Army, Burgos has centered on serving to her fellow vets get the assistance they want, working because the outreach director of the Steven A. Cohen Navy Household Clinic at Centerstone in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Its 21 clinics have handled greater than 30,000 service members, veterans and their households.
“Typically you might have to achieve your hand out and seize them by means of and allow them to know that it is OK,” Burgos stated.
Whereas ladies make up about 10% of all veterans, they’re 30% of the vets handled by Cohen Veterans Community.
“We predict that is as a result of feminine veterans are extra prepared to hunt remedy,” Tracy Neal-Walden, chief scientific officer for Cohen Veterans Community, advised CBS News.
“Feminine veterans are very resilient,” she stated. “Oftentimes there’s extra of an emphasis on taking good care of these different day by day wants and taking good care of the opposite individuals within the household. And in order that’s why the signs might go untreated for a few years.”
