Picking up the ball

MANIFESTO

While I don't like the incessant overlapping of the purposes of Memorial Day and Veterans Day, I can't help but be impressed by this Memorial Day article wherein we find private interests actually doing some good for veterans (as opposed to entities like Blackwater and KBR) in what should be a public endeavor.

Thousands of private counselors are offering free services to troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with mental health problems, jumping in to help because the military is short on therapists.

On this Memorial Day, America's armed forces and its veterans are coping with depression, suicide, family, marital and job problems on a scale not seen since Vietnam. The government has been in beg-borrow-and-steal mode, trying to hire psychiatrists and other professionals, recruit them with incentives or borrow them from other agencies ...

There are only 1,431 mental health professionals among the nation's 1.4 million active-duty military personnel ...

About 300,000 of those who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan are estimated to have anxiety or post-traumatic stress, a recent private study said. Add in spouses left home to manage families and households without their partner as well as children deprived of parents during long or repeated tours of duty, and the number with problems balloons to 1 million.

Happy Memorial Day to all.