Butler VA Health Care System

Mental health means breaking old records. Visit Make the Connection(https://maketheconnection.net/mhm) during Mental Health Month to discover what Kionte, USMC Veteran and Paralympic athlete, has been able to achieve.

What do the words “mental health” mean to you? For some, these words bring to mind symptoms and conditions — struggles with anxiety, insomnia, anger, isolation, depression.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Mental health can also mean reconnecting with a son or daughter, realizing you don’t need alcohol and moving on, regaining confidence and going back to school, acing an interview and landing your dream job. Every day, Veterans prove that mental health means building a stronger you.

This May, in observance of Mental Health Month, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs will highlight the life-changing outcomes and the possibilities that stem from mental health treatment. Whether you’re a Veteran sharing your story, a family member providing support, or a friend lending a hand, focusing on these positive outcomes can be a powerful way to provide encouragement and shape how Veterans and our entire nation thinks about treatment when they’re facing mental health challenges.

There’s Kionte, a Marine Corps Veteran, who’s now climbing mountains. He overcame the depression that developed after he lost part of his right leg in Afghanistan. There’s Linda, who went back to school, earned her master’s degree, and now works for VA. She overcame PTSD after working as a combat trauma nurse in both the Army and the Air Force.

We encourage you to share these stories this May and visit MakeTheConnection.net/mhm to see what mental health has really meant to so many other Veterans.

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VA Butler’s Center for Behavioral Health (CBH) is a treatment resource for Veterans struggling with a wide range of emotional, readjustment and behavioral health issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety, mental illness, substance abuse, or military sexual trauma (MST). Interdisciplinary staff includes psychologists, psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses and social workers. Psychiatric medication and evidence based treatments are available as recommended.

To learn more about mental health care treatment options or to request to be seen by VA Butler’s Center for Behavioral Health, call 800-362-8262. Immediate help is available at www.VeteransCrisisLine.net or by calling the Crisis Line at 1-800-273-8255 (push 1) or texting 838255.