I’m angrier than a laptop user with a dead battery and no charger over this. I’m angry because this hasn’t happened before now. There is a law that was passed in 2023 called The Brandon Act, which seeks to provide expedited mental health care to servicepersons.
The act was named after Brandon Caserta, who committed suicide, who sought but did not get mental attention. His parents said that he tried to get help, but was turned away and told to, “suck it up.” If he’d been in the civilian world, he would have gotten help, but in the military world, it seems, not so much.
Caserta had been dealing with depression but still got no help. In a press release, the Department of Defense said:
“The Brandon Act is a law that creates a self-initiated referral process for service members seeking a mental health evaluation and aims to reduce stigma by allowing them to seek help confidentially. The Brandon Act is named after Petty Officer 3rd Class Brandon Caserta who died by suicide in 2018. The legislation was signed into law by President Joe Biden on December 27, 2021, as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022.”
In the news article, one person stated that if he’d sought mental health care while he was in, that would have ended his military career. If that’s true, then it’s high time for the military to do its part to eliminate the stigma that still surrounds mental health care.
Whether you lean left or whether you lean right, surely you’d agree that members of the military serve our nation. Some make it through their entire careers without serious injuries or death. Also, some of them pay the ultimate price. So why ignore their basic needs, especially mental health care?
I never take those things for granted, but it’s comforting to know that people with mental illness don’t have to go it alone, walking around unmedicated. In this day and age, the only thing stopping a person from getting proper medicated and cared for is that person themselves.
Look, members of our military deserve to be cared for. Combat servicemembers and all serving men and women as well as veterans should absolutely have mental health care at their fingertips. As we see here, it could be a matter of life and death!