Homelessness Among Veterans Essay

Words: 516
Pages: 3

For the last decade, homelessness among veterans has been a major social concern in American. In fact, significant research has been conducted to see the impact of wars on returning military personnel and their reintegration into society. Recent studies published in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease and the American Journal of Public Health have also looked at whether or not there was increased risk of homelessness after leaving military service. These studies focused primarily on homelessness among veterans post Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. According to estimates from the Veteran’s Administration, between 31,412 to 33,376 military personnel who were deployed during those conflicts had incidents of homelessness in 2015 (Metraux, Byrne, Cusack, Hunt-Johnson & True, 2017). Other large scale showed evidence that homelessness among service men and women was also attributed to mental health problems and socioeconomic factors (Metraux et al., 2017). Additionally, specific mental health diagnosis like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder also had a moderate impact on the prevalence of homelessness among veterans(Metraux, Clegg, Daigh, Culhane & Kane, 2013). …show more content…
It is important to explore factors that contributed to pathways into homelessness for these individuals in order to create a system that prevents this from reoccurring; while addressing current problem. The argument can be made that it is a societal responsibility to ensure that those who serve and protect the nation are entitled to services that address their physical and mental health and their financial well-being which will in turn impact their social functioning and family life (Metraux et al., 2017)