Connecting available mental health services with the veterans who need them can provide challenges, which providers and politicians tackled at a roundtable discussion Monday afternoon.
Held in the college’s Veterans’ Oasis at Tunxis Community College, where veterans can meet peer to peer, the forum brought U.S. senators together with people who focus on helping veterans deal with what Sen. Richard Blumenthal called “invisible wounds of war.”
“They want to be able to talk to other veterans,” said Sen. Chris Murphy. “The best therapy that a veteran can get is talking to another veteran so that’s the capacity that we need to build, more funding for these peer-to-peer groups, so that veterans don’t feel alone.”
They’re not joining the American Legion or Veterans of Foreign Wars, the senators were told, but the veterans back from Iraq or Afghanistan need that contact with each other just the same.
Murphy said he hopes to introduce mental health reforms in the Senate next year.
