Women who fight in wars also have to fight for their right to do so. But what are the obstacles impeding their progress in achieving equal status as both active service members and as veterans? This book, written by a team of female veterans and military scholars, demonstrates the ways in which women service members and veterans experience a unique set of challenges when attempting to both honorably serve their country and reintegrate into civilian society following military service. These challenges include – but are not limited to – discrimination, staggering rates of suicide, and barriers to obtaining treatment for military sexual trauma and other critical benefits through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Women Veterans: Lifting the Veil of Invisibility examines current service-related policies and gender in the military’s hierarchical power structure. Here, a confluence of white male privilege and entitlement, the culture of domination, and the effeminization of the enemy manifest themselves as a backlash against women, calling into question a woman’s agency and her very status as a citizen. Special attention in the book is paid to the civil-military divide, representative bureaucracy, and the function of the military and civilian justice systems. Moreover, the need for appropriate healthcare policies and structures is examined within a ‘wicked problems’ framework. The authors conclude that the responsibility for women veterans, and all veterans for that matter, must become a matter of compelling government interest. This ground-breaking book is required reading for practitioners of public policy and administration with an interest in military and veterans affairs, public health, NGOs and activist groups, as well as scholars of gender and public service, public personnel management, and nonprofit management.

The Handbook of Psychosocial Interventions for Veterans and Service Members is a "one stop" handbook for non-military clinicians working with service members, veterans, and their families.

The challenges facing military veterans who return to civilian life in the United States are persistent and well documented. But for all the political outcry and attempts to improve military members' readjustments, veterans of all service eras face formidable obstacles related to mental health, substance abuse, employment, and — most damningly — homelessness. Homelessness Among U.S. Veterans synthesizes the new glut of research on veteran homelessness — geographic trends, root causes, effective and ineffective interventions to mitigate it — in a format that provides a needed reference as this public health fight continues to be fought. Codifying the data and research from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) campaign to end veteran homelessness, psychologist Jack Tsai links disparate lines of research to produce an advanced and elegant resource on a defining social issue of our time.

Approximately 4 million U.S. service members took part in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Shortly after troops started returning from their deployments, some active-duty service members and veterans began experiencing mental health problems. Given the stressors associated with war, it is not surprising that some service members developed such mental health conditions as posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, and substance use disorder. Subsequent epidemiologic studies conducted on military and veteran populations that served in the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq provided scientific evidence that those who fought were in fact being diagnosed with mental illnesses and experiencing mental healthâ€"related outcomesâ€"in particular, suicideâ€"at a higher rate than the general population. This report provides a comprehensive assessment of the quality, capacity, and access to mental health care services for veterans who served in the Armed Forces in Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation New Dawn. It includes an analysis of not only the quality and capacity of mental health care services within the Department of Veterans Affairs, but also barriers faced by patients in utilizing those services.