New Jersey must introduce legislation to help our veterans get critical services | Opinion – NJ.com

By Ande Richards

Brett D’Alessandro is a veteran who lives and works in New Jersey. He served in the Marine Corps from 2010 to 2016 in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, and struggled to reenter mainstream society. He says he and many of the men he served with used drugs and alcohol to cope with the trauma of war.

According to D’Alessandro, many veterans, especially Marines, don’t seek help, which can hurt them in the long run. But there is another obstacle that may prevent veterans from receiving assistance — their discharge status.

The Department of Defense issues military discharges (DOD), and their determination affects the benefits veterans can apply for through the Veteran’s Administration (VA). The DOD and VA are two separate and independent federal agencies, but the level of benefits are typically closely aligned with the type of discharge.

An honorable discharge is the most common, with over 85% of veterans receiving this type of discharge. These veterans are entitled to all VA benefits, including disability compensation, educational, healthcare, vocational, and housing. However, benefits are reduced for those with Other than Honorable Discharges (OTH).

New Jersey has over 8,000 veterans with less than “honorable discharge” and 1,000 OTH who require benefits. The New Jersey Reentry Corporation’s Veterans Justice Outreach Initiative report, “Other Than Honorable Discharge A National Veteran’s Crisis: a New Jersey Solution,” seeks to offer remedies to this lamentable issue.

The statistics are heartening: 8% of state prisoners are veterans, 22 veterans commit suicide every day in the U.S. and 30% of military personnel that served in Iraq and Afghanistan have mental health challenges.

“For persons that have served our country, there is a clear need to ensure that those veterans who wore the nation’s uniform are provided basic critical services to assist them — in certain cases to put their lives back together,” said former Gov. Jim McGreevey. “It’s critically important to recognize that, particularly for combat veterans, the trauma of combat is not a normal course, it’s not the normal course of life.”

Dr. Ramon Solhkhah, of the Department of Psychiatry at Hackensack Meridian Health, said we know that about a third of the veterans who returned from combat in Afghanistan and Iraq have a mental health issue. These mental health issues also impact the veteran’s partners, spouses and children

“You know, that mouth dropping a statistic of 22 veterans per day who lose their life to suicide, put another way, that’s an airplane crash a week. Imagine the public outcry for support and services if that was happening.”

He says this NJRC report is really a critical first step to try and address some of these issues. The report gives us a roadmap here in New Jersey, in terms of trying to address these issues in a very large systemic way.

The report details that many of the veterans with OTH are discharged because of conduct related to trauma experienced during military service, like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury (TBI), and military sexual trauma (MST).

There are avenues within the military to get discharges upgraded to general or honorable, including going through the Discharge Upgrade Review Board (DRB) and Character of Discharge Determination (COD). However, they are cavernous and time-consuming for veterans who may be dealing with a serious injury or the inability to seek help.

New Jersey Re-Entry’s report substantiates the need for the Legislature to pass legislation that restores benefits to veterans with “bad paper discharges” as a result of PTSD, TBI, MST, “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” or other service-related traumas.

The legislation would make it easier for vets with OTH discharges to get state benefits by creating partnerships and policies that coordinate services for veterans. The bills have the support of senators Joseph Cryan, Sandra Cunningham, Joseph Vitale, and Nicholas Scutari and community partners in healthcare and veteran’s administrative services who would work to create coordinated services for veterans who need the help.

Vitale said it may be difficult to get legislation passed but believes they can get it done.

“We can’t put ourselves in those shoes, but we can try to imagine what that’s like. They don’t have the opportunity for treatment or access to mental health services available to others. Because of the OTH discharge, it’s not for them. Tragic.”

States such as California, New York, and Connecticut have passed legislation making it easier for veterans to obtain services while they wait for a determination of eligibility from the VA. It makes sense for New Jersey to make similar changes.

As USMC veteran D’Alessandro said to the group, “We just want relief.”

Ande Richards is new to New Jersey. She wants to hear from New Jersey’s communities of color, people with disabilities, the LGBTQ+ communities, and those who feel underserved by traditional media. She may be reached at arichards@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Instagram @angelcitygirl or Twitter @anderichards.

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