Community Cyberspace: PTSD/TBI Care For Veterans

Dear Friends,

In order to maximize its efforts to bring expert professional psychosocial help to military veterans, law enforcement personnel and others impacted by exposure to extreme violence and cruelty,  IMCRA has continually monitored other programs currently available in the US.  Doing this enables us to best fill the gaps they leave.  Allowing even one traumatized hero to fall through the cracks in such programs is, for us, just as bad as doing the same to a dozen.

We approached the issue as would the family of a traumatized veteran looking for help online.   Below is a brief overview of what turned up on a websearch:

U.S. Veterans Administration:  We found this quite daunting, especially in an emergency.  The site provides a host of links and telephone numbers, but almost all yield robotic voices and complex navigation menus.  Several types of advocates are mentioned, but there is no way given to reach them directly.  Finally, some of the programs, for example, the "About Face" program, gives information from 2011-2012 which is frequently out of date.

Wounded Warrior Project:  Again, we found a large and complex website with many services detailed.  Unfortunately these were again not were not clickable as direct link. We also found that many of the peer-group services would not be something chosen by individuals or families wanting to remain anonymous.

PTSD Foundation of America:  Acessing the website reveals that it is a regional program focused primarily in Texas and California.  They do provide access to "peer counselors" but these people are not identified and can only be reached through a generic email to the central office which requires the users name etc. We also found the frequent requests for donations dotting the site to be somewhat offputting.

IMCRA endeavours to cut through all of the above by providing instant anonymous access to the best professional expertise on PTSD topics ranging from suicide to depression to flashbacks...without the need for the user to do anything but click a live link to that topic.  If additional materials or links are needed they are in one convenient location acessible via a button next to the topic covered by faculty and dowloadable as PDFs.  Also, in our program the user communicates directly with the faculty member, not with a "counselor".   As we are now just weeks away from launching a new and improved version of our program your contributions to our goals will be especially appreciated at this time.  Thank you.