MINUTES for 2021-05-25 FINAL - Laserfiche WebLink

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Veterans Advisory Committee Minutes May 25, 2021 Page 2 Debra Lewis: Michael, you muted yourself. Chair Doolittle: There I am. Has everyone read the minutes form the last meeting? Johnny Hiduchick-Nakayama: Yes. Chair Doolittle: Do we have a motion to accept the minutes from the last meeting? Oh, that's right we can't vote on anything. (laughter) Sorry about that. Lewis: We'll table that until we can get a quorum. I left a message for George I think he might be able to get on. Homeless Veterans during Pandemic Chair Doolittle: I just had a videoconference this morning with the Save a Warrior program. I don't know if any of you are familiar with that. They are a national organization, and the VA has been recommending or sending patients to the Save a Warrior program. They have an intense 75-hour program that they run out of a facility in Ohio, and we entered into some discussions about expanding their program and maybe bringing some of that to us, here in Hawaii or in our Veterans healthcare clinics and the Vet center referring patients to their program. It's a free program. The only thing that's required is transportation to and from Ohio. But it's an intense PTSD, moral injury program. They've had a great amount of success, helping veterans with PTSD and traumatic and it's more than just combat and military, it's integrating childhood and life experiences and that kind of stuff from the entirety of a person's mental health, not just someone's experiences in the war. I found that discussion really interesting and I'm going to be talking with their Founder and a couple of their Directors this next week about how, first of all, (inaudible). I don't know Isaac, if you've heard about it because you're in mental health, but I've been following them online for a couple of years and they seem to be, unlike Wounded Warrior Project that was just basically fundraising. These people seem to have more professionals involved in helping the mental health of veterans and I was... has anyone ever heard of them? Isaac Nahakuelua: No, I haven't heard of them. But I do understand the concept, they call it compounding traumas. There's a correlation and I got this information from 4 or 5 years ago, there was a conference at the Hilton on the Waikoloa side and the VA's top psychiatrist came down and he gave a talk and he talked about compounding traumas. He said there's a correlation to the (inaudible) rehabilitation to combat veterans that had a challenging childhood where they experienced traumas from their childhood and then going into combat and dealing with the traumas of war and leaving that environment and in the civilian world and they have these two traumas from their past, childhood and war kind of colliding and getting all tangled up in there. IT causes more angst, that's not the best word, but more mental health challenges than combat veterans that had a good childhood, defined as mother and father together for most of their life and stable family, etc. and then going through combat, they seem to have less mental health challenges than the later.