My title is misleading, because I give us praise for knowing how to support other vets. The app is more oriented to a previous thread that dealt with brothers/sisters having trouble speaking with friends/family. I think the purpose of that group/website is to turn the table a bit onto the friends & family because as I wrote before they are clueless and in my experience a small fraction showed any ability to support me.
Yeah, there's big difference between "trying" and doing it. Not to mention, they surely did not contact us nor did they probably look at any such forum. From what I read it was more oriented towards Vets in returning from combat in transition to civilian society. So, it may or may not be focused on PTSD but we all know those doing this with be dealing with a lot of combat anxiety symptoms and challenges.
No, they are NEVER going to actually recreate or CLONE what we have here because this is a very unique forum with far different goals. (My apology, the title can be misleading)
But for the millions beyond this forum who struggle as we have, what is better? To do the same thing and not try anything? To accept 22+ people (just in the US) ending their lives each day? Seems the trick is to continue to encourage, to pressure military and civilians to reach out and check in combat vets. And to not settle for the standard BS deflections and isolation.
So, how do they do that; rely on the current standard? "I tried to talk to him but he is just a hard core prick now" - "She just seems different so we don't talk anymore" - "Have no clue how he is doing, I never hear from him anymore." Not only is that a fail, it is unacceptable.
In the brief scan I did, they seem to encourage vets to do what they were taught in the military, teamwork, to have a buddy's back, and to ensure they use those skills afterward as well, especially with someone who may be struggling. Almost everyone enjoyed the camaraderie and most miss it later.
IMHO, it is not so much the mechanism as it is simply encouraging them to reach out, giving people examples of how to reach out and engage, how to not fall for the initial rejection or deflections. After decoding my own mess, I developed an ability to get many battle buddies to go get treatment. I feel once you break through that initial wall or denials most vets really know they need to talk and want to.
Sure, most of us can do that already because we live it but we are the few. We do a lot of isolation and avoidance ourselves. We can't begin to cover all they others suffering, most of whom don't have a clue they have combat anxiety, what it is or that they are not alone. That is obvious by the 98% of Intros on here that end up with people happy to find out they are not abnormal, that many others have the same issues they have.
They key is getting more of society engaged in approaching and reaching out to vets. And like most things whether they actually decide to keep using this app or even if it works or not is not really the end game. As long as they realize, I can and I should reach out to my buddy or family member than it is a success. If one person gets to one suffering vets in time, it is a success in my book.
