The ‘22 Until None’ article in the Nov. 6 edition touched on some of the reasons for homeless veterans and stressed the importance of a connection to the Veterans Administration.

Getting homeless veterans connected to the VA can certainly be a life changing event. Years ago I worked with some 100% mentally disabled veterans who lived in a group home in one of Orange County’s cities. One of the veterans I worked with had been homeless for quite a long while. He was living in the New York City subway system where he slept on the floor in various stations.

One day when he was awakened by a New York City police officer and told he’d have to move on, he went into one of his rants. The officer had done a tour of duty in Vietnam and he understood the veteran’s raving was all about the horrors of battles in the Vietnamese jungle. After the officer calmed him down he took him to the police station and fingerprinted him. The concerned officer ran the fingerprints through the Veterans Administration and he discovered that the homeless subway floor sleeper was indeed a veteran of the Vietnam War. At age nineteen he’d been the only survivor of a horrific attack on a position. He was catatonic when he was discovered by the relief column. After the attack he wasn’t right and he was sent home.

At home he had fights with members of his family and he was essentially thrown out. He was supposed to see people at the VA, but he never showed up. The officer got him to a VA hospital and he was evaluated and medicated. He was sent to live in a group home run by the VA.

Many of the homeless are mentally ill and many of them are unable to get connected to available help on their own. I believe the formerly homeless veteran, who was connected to a VA home by a concerned police officer, was a classic example of the diathesis stress model for the onset of schizophrenia, in which there is a predisposition to develop the malady under extreme stress. Combat is certainly an extreme stress for a nineteen year old kid.