Why Voices of Valor?
As Veterans return and face reintegration into civilian life they face numerous challenges:
- Transitioning wartime and military skills into civilian life
- The perceived stigma associated with seeking mental-health services
- Resuming and continuing relationships with friends and family after separation and stressful experiences
- Forging a path for further education or re-employment
- Self-medicating and substance abuse
- Identifying, acknowledging, and treating post-traumatic stress (PTSD) and the residual effects of traumatic brain injury (TBI)
- TBI manifests itself in various debilitating ways that are hard for civilians to grasp and deal with, especially in the workplace
Five Things In Summary:
- Voices of Valor is effective. It strikes at the primary issues and allows expression of the traumas facing veterans as they reintegrate into civilian society and into their family-and-friend community.
- Voices of Valor provides a critical support system. The program is a powerful bonding experience for the participants as it creates a circle of new veterans who are experiencing similar challenges for support – a “group sponsor.”
- Voices of Valor has developed a comprehensive training program. With a detailed curriculum, qualified professional musician/facilitators and psychology mentors are identified and trained by the experienced staff of Music For All Seasons.
- Voices of Valor is a lower cost compared with other therapies. The expense of running a nine-session program for eight to ten veterans is significantly less than group therapy sessions and significantly less than doctors’ visits, individual psychotherapy and medication.
- Voices of Valor delivers measureable results. Evaluation is part of the curriculum. The results are maintained anonymously and right to privacy laws are fully adhered to.
13% of US adults overall are veterans, including 24% of men and 2% of women.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/158729/men-women-veterans.aspx
Every night, approximately 58 thousand veterans are homeless; 23 thousand of those are unsheltered.
Source: US Department of Housing and Urban Development
https://www.onecpd.info/resources/documents/AHAR-2013-Part1.pdf
21% of all US suicides are veterans.
http://www.va.gov/opa/docs/suicide-data-report-2012-final.pdf
According to the Defense Casualty Analysis System of the US Department of Defense, the number of US military killed in action while serving in Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation New Dawn (OND) is 6,608 as of June 26, 2014
https://www.dmdc.osd.mil/dcas/pages/main.xhtml
In the United States, every 65 minutes a U.S. Military Veteran dies from suicide. That’s 22 per day, 8,030 per year.
https://www.va.gov/opa/docs/Suicide-Data-Report-2012-final.pdf
There were 154 suicides among active-duty troops between January 1 and June 1, 2012 – a rate of nearly one per day.
That number represents an 18 percent increase over the 130 active-duty military suicides for the same period in 2011. There were 123 suicides from January to early June in 2010, and 133 during that period in 2009, the Pentagon said.
By contrast, there were 124 American military fatalities in Afghanistan as of June 1 this year, according to the Pentagon.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/09/us/suicides-eclipse-war-deaths-for-us-troops.html?_r=0
Voices of Valor is a program of
Music For All Seasons, Inc.