Evaluation of the Department of Veterans Affairs Mental Health Services
Evaluation of the Department of Veterans Affairs Mental Health Services

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2018-03-29

Total Pages: 467

ISBN-13: 0309466601

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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.

Courage After Fire for Parents of Service Members
Courage After Fire for Parents of Service Members

Author: Paula Domenici

Publisher: New Harbinger Publications

Published: 2013-07-01

Total Pages: 189

ISBN-13: 1608827178

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Parents of returning service members may sometimes feel that their voices are not heard. The media is saturated with stories about troops returning from deployment with mental health problems like post-traumatic stress, depression, and substance abuse. Some also return home with physical problems including traumatic brain injury, physical pain or more severe injuries like amputations. Almost all returning service members experience reintegration challenges such as readjusting to family and community, finding employment or attending school. But rarely do we hear how parents are taking on the role of supporting their sons and daughters who have served our country. In countless ways these parents provide help—and when their military child suffers significant physical or psychological injuries, they may once again become their primary caretaker. For mothers and fathers and others in a parenting role, it can be overwhelming at times, and resources are limited. Courage after Fire for Parents of Service Members provides a compassionate and accessible guide for the parents or guardians of returning troops. This groundbreaking book acknowledges the significant contribution and sacrifice parents have made for their military children, provides strategies and resources that will assist them in understanding and supporting their son or daughter, and will validate their own personal experiences. Recommendations for helping them care for their returning service member are woven throughout the book, as well as education about the importance of taking care of themselves to help prevent caregiver burnout. Vignettes and reflections from parents who have had a child deploy offer a sense of hope and community. Even in the best of circumstances, parents play an instrumental role in helping their sons and daughters successfully reintegrate after deployment. This book is a valuable resource for any parent who is seeking to better understand and support a returning military child while caring for themselves.

The GI Bill
The GI Bill

Author: Glenn Altschuler

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2009-06-02

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 0199720428

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On rare occasions in American history, Congress enacts a measure so astute, so far-reaching, so revolutionary, it enters the language as a metaphor. The Marshall Plan comes to mind, as does the Civil Rights Act. But perhaps none resonates in the American imagination like the G.I. Bill. In a brilliant addition to Oxford's acclaimed Pivotal Moments in American History series, historians Glenn C. Altschuler and Stuart M. Blumin offer a compelling and often surprising account of the G.I. Bill and its sweeping and decisive impact on American life. Formally known as the Serviceman's Readjustment Act of 1944, it was far from an obvious, straightforward piece of legislation, but resulted from tense political maneuvering and complex negotiations. As Altschuler and Blumin show, an unlikely coalition emerged to shape and pass the bill, bringing together both New Deal Democrats and conservatives who had vehemently opposed Roosevelt's social-welfare agenda. For the first time in American history returning soldiers were not only supported, but enabled to pursue success--a revolution in America's policy towards its veterans. Once enacted, the G.I. Bill had far-reaching consequences. By providing job training, unemployment compensation, housing loans, and tuition assistance, it allowed millions of Americans to fulfill long-held dreams of social mobility, reshaping the national landscape. The huge influx of veterans and federal money transformed the modern university and the surge in single home ownership vastly expanded America's suburbs. Perhaps most important, as Peter Drucker noted, the G.I. Bill "signaled the shift to the knowledge society." The authors highlight unusual or unexpected features of the law--its color blindness, the frankly sexist thinking behind it, and its consequent influence on race and gender relations. Not least important, Altschuler and Blumin illuminate its role in individual lives whose stories they weave into this thoughtful account. Written with insight and narrative verve by two leading historians, The G.I. Bill makes a major contribution to the scholarship of postwar America.

Writing Programs, Veterans Studies, and the Post-9/11 University
Writing Programs, Veterans Studies, and the Post-9/11 University

Author: D. Alexis Hart

Publisher: Studies in Writing and Rhetori

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780814175057

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For good reasons, the rise of veterans studies has occurred within the discipline of writing studies, with its interdisciplinary approach to scholarship, pedagogy, and community outreach. Writing faculty are often a point of first contact with veteran students, and writing classrooms are by their nature the site of disclosures, providing opportunities to make connections and hear narratives that debunk the myth of the stereotypical combat veteran of popular culture. D. Alexis Hart and Roger Thompson offer rich academic inquiry into the idea of "the veteran" as well as into ways that veteran culture has been fostered or challenged in writing classrooms, in writing centers, and in college communities more generally. Presenting a more nuanced approach to understanding "the veteran" leads not only to more useful research, but also to more wide-ranging and significant scholarship and community engagement. Such an approach recognizes veterans as assets to the college campus, encourages institutions to customize their veterans programs and courses, and leads to more thoughtful engagement with veterans in the writing classroom.

Reinventing Higher Education
Reinventing Higher Education

Author: Ben Wildavsky

Publisher: Harvard Education Press

Published: 2011-04-01

Total Pages: 362

ISBN-13: 1612504272

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The inspiration for this timely book is the pressing need for fresh ideas and innovations in U.S. higher education. At the heart of the volume is the realization that higher education must evolve in fundamental ways if it is to respond to changing professional, economic, and technological circumstances, and if it is to successfully reach and prepare a vast population of students—traditional and nontraditional alike—for success in the coming decades. This collection of provocative articles by leading scholars, writers, innovators, and university administrators examines the current higher education environment and its chronic resistance to change; the rise of for-profit universities; the potential future role of community colleges in a significantly revised higher education realm; and the emergence of online learning as a means to reshape teaching and learning and to reach new consumers of higher education. Combining trenchant critiques of current conditions with thought-provoking analyses of possible reforms and new directions, Reinventing Higher Education is an ambitious exploration of possible future directions for revitalized American colleges and universities.

Comprehensive Internationalization
Comprehensive Internationalization

Author: John K. Hudzik

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-11-20

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1317676726

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This book is a timely insight into the internationalization of higher education institutions. The internationalization of higher education is a global phenomenon, but with substantial variation in how it is made operational in individual institutions. Comprehensive Internationalization focuses on desirable practices in institutions and their actual approaches to implement a more integrated, strategic, or comprehensive global engagement across their core missions: teaching, research, and service. Part I of the book investigates a wide range of issues governing the internationalization of institutions: Outlining the origins, meaning and evolution toward more strategic and comprehensive forms of internationalization; building an understanding of the meanings of comprehensive internationalization, as well as common aspirations, when linked to different types of institutions; understanding the rationales and motivations for internationalization and intended results; creating an institutional vision and culture to support comprehensive internationalization; and implementing key strategies for successful internationalization in terms of practical actions and programs and results, including identifying and ameliorating barriers, engaging organizational change, assessing outcomes, and obtaining resources. Part II of the book offers case stories from institutions across the globe which describe varying pathways toward more comprehensive internationalization. Institutions were chosen to reflect the diversity of higher education and approaches to internationalization. An analysis of the cases uncovers similarities and differences, as well as common lessons to be learned. With contributions from mainland Europe, Australia, the USA, the UK, Latin America, Singapore and South Africa, the global application of the book is unparalleled. Comprehensive Internationalization will be of vital interest to a wide variety of higher education institutional leaders and managers as they address the problems and solutions for institutional internationalization available to them in a rapidly changing educational world and a 21st Century global environment.