The Connections between Veterans and Violence
An investigative report
On New Year’s Day, January 1, 2025, a man drove a pickup truck into the crowd in New Orleans, Louisiana, killing 14 people. After learning that the man was ex-military, I wanted to do more research. This article explores the potential connections between PTSD in veterans and violent extremism.
General Background
The PTSD VA Research Page on Violence presents an in-depth look at the complex relationships between Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and violent behaviors, specifically in individuals who have served in the military or have experienced similar traumatic events. The article explores how trauma can lead to an increased amount of emotional distress, irritability, and aggressions, it emphasized the importance of being able to understand and address these issues within mental health treatment. PTSD is a common psychological condition in individuals that have experienced severe trauma, most commonly developed in people that have gone through physical abuse, witnessed violent events, or served in military combat. In some cases people who suffer from PTSD may undertake violent behaviors such as heightened aggression, irritability or hypervigilance. The connection between PTSD and violence has been extensively studied over the past years, especially in groups veterans, survivors of domestic violence, and others that have been exposed to very traumatic events. Throughout research, it has been shown that the effects of trauma can present in both emotional instability and physical aggression, making it important to address the issues in treatment plans. Even though PTSD does not necessarily mean all individuals with trauma become violent, the emotional difficulties caused by it may lead to the increasing likelihood of undergoing aggressive behavior, it all depends on the coping mechanisms the individual uses.
Official Responses
The responses from international and government to the connection between veterans and violence vary across countries. The responses usually focus on thinking of ways to support the veterans, such as providing mental health support, reintegration programs, and adjustments to policies. For conditions that are linked to violent behavior, such as PTSD, the department of veterans affairs in the United States has put money into many mental health services. Many of these programs like the VA’s suicide prevention lifeline, therapy for trauma, and veterans’ courts all have the same purpose, which is to reduce the amount of violence by giving these veterans different types of treatments and legal alternatives. In the UK there is a similar course of action, the ministry of defence provides support and specialized mental health treatments to help veterans get used to civilian life, with a focus on trauma rehabilitation. In countries like Canada and Australia that have a large veteran population, they focus on reintegration within the community as well as different mental health services that help reduce the risk of violence. In order to solve the difficulties faced by veterans, these efforts emphasized the necessity of specialized support services and cooperation between communities and governments.
Recent Developments
An article about new research on veterans treatment courts, explores the mental health of these veterans and the criminal justice challenges they are faced with. Specialized courts that are designed to address these challenges are also known as Veterans Treatment Courts (VTCs). Now these VTCs provide an individualized approach where our veterans are receiving treatment and support rather than being faced with the traditional legal punishments. The research that the VTC has done showed the increasing need for courts catered to veterans, and includes qualitative interviews with the team members. While the treatment courts are still expanding, a significant development is a 6 million dollar evaluation that is being done by the national institute of justice to assess how effective VTCs are when it comes to the needs of justice involved veterans. This evaluation is meant to provide more data on the outcomes of the VTCs, it is still ongoing and the results are to be released in 2027.
What does the future hold?
In order to prevent people from becoming radicalized and violent, we as a society need to improve and expand on ways that deal with trauma, mental health, and radicalization together. In an article from the Department of Justice, it talks about how as we continue to learn more about how people come to be extremists, it is important to come up with better methods that take into account the personal hardships people go through. Such as, discrimination, feeling alone, or having to grieve the loss of someone. This means adding more trauma care into health systems so it can not only prevent violent extremism, but also other issues that harm society like drug abuse, gang activity, and other mental health problems. To stop radicalization, we need to go through some big changes. Some of these changes can be improving training for community workers, teachers, and police officers, and teaching them how to spot and how to handle trauma. It’s also important to create safe environments for family, friends, and coworkers to report potential threats without having to worry about receiving backlash or getting in trouble. By setting up other support systems through mental health experts or community leaders, where they can help catch these issues earlier. Also, helping different communities by creating a safe environment, especially for the younger people is vitally important, it allows people to feel safe in their communities and become stronger. Providing them with support, encouraging them to get involved in positive activities, and helping them deal with community trauma will make it less likely for them to resort to having extreme ideas. In the end, with different types of support and working together, such as trauma care, community help, and prevention programs, it will most likely be the key to stopping radicalization and violent extremism in the future.
References
Byrne, James M., et al. “New Research on Veterans Treatment Courts: An Overview of the Community Participatory Research on Veterans in Specialized Programming Project.” National Library of Medicine, 4 January 2024, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11648676/. Accessed 22 January 2025.
Friedman, Matthew J. “History of PTSD in Veterans: Civil War to DSM-5.” U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 10 January 2025, https://www.ptsd.va.gov/understand/what/history_ptsd.asp. Accessed 22 January 2025.
Miller, Alisa B., et al. “The Roles of Trauma and Mental Health in Preventing Domestic Radicalization and Violent Extremism.” National Institute of Justice, 22 April 2024, https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/roles-trauma-and-mental-health-preventing-domestic-radicalization-and-violent. Accessed 22 January 2025.
Norman, Sonya, et al. “Research Findings on PTSD and Violence.” U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 7 August 2023, https://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/treat/cooccurring/research_violence.asp. Accessed 22 January 2025.
