The Man from Glad

For once, I'm not going to write something sad about a fellow high school classmate.

I'm going to write about Bill Borden, who turns 43 today. This is an excerpt from my book, "Generations," a book about my family that, hopefully, you'll see on the bookshelves (will there be bookshelves?) in a few years:

The person who really saved me, at least during my teenage years, was Bill Borden. He showed up at my house, in Point Pleasant, in 1984, wanting to go the beach. Something about that visit made him my best friend, forever, because he never did stop showing up at my house, unannounced, ready to have fun. I saw him as my strongest confidant, and even a savior.

We had known each other before, and we had worked together, too. But from then on, we were best friends. I learned more from Bill than anybody. I marveled at his ability to smile his way through problems. I was struck by his ability to just go up to people, almost randomly, and start talking to them. I was amazed at how little he would say, but he could somehow carry on a conversation with anybody – particularly women – for hours.

I was always too shy and cynical to be social. I felt insecure about the way I looked. I felt embarrassed about my family. Bill had a similar background, but he didn’t care about any of that. He was a slender, but strong kid who talked slowly and had an awkward, but honest and even charming way about him. He was a smart guy who did some silly things. Once, he read a dense geopolitical book from Ayn Rand in one day. Other times, he'll shave or shower right after a late-night party. I can always imagine him saying to those who question him about it, “I have to get clean. I have to go to work next morning."

Bill’s mission was to have fun, to smile and to live a good life. Bill had no lofty expectations for himself; he just wanted to work hard and go to bed, and then wake up the next morning and do it all over again.

Bill's family had problems, too, the kind of problems every family has. He always found a positive way to look at things, and he always believed there was a solution to everything, even when everything seemed to be falling apart.

With Bill, I learned how to keep friends. I was too embarrassed by my own family life to invite them over, and have them bear witness to my mother getting one more “will you love me forever and ever?” out my father. I didn't want them to see her limp, and I certainly didn't want them to eat her food. But Bill didn't care. When he showed up at my door, during the summer of 1984, he just walked in and talked. He stayed for a good hour, talking to my mother and father, letting a warm, sunny day go by. He even had a sandwich, one that contained my mother’s thick, grisly meat loaf, and swallowed it nearly whole before finally we got on our bikes and headed for the beach. He built a bond that day with my parents and, as a result, with myself that would never go away.

With Bill, I felt like I finally had an equal. I no longer had to stand in the shadow of my family. I no longer had to depend on people who viewed life as a chore. When we were intense, he would be laid back. When we'd rush, he'd be methodical. When something upset us, Bill would brush it off. The more he came to my house, the more his attitude seemed to rub off on the others.

He made my mother laugh as hard as anybody. She seemed to be comfortable with him, too, and she even asked him some probing, personal questions. “Are you still dating Diane?” my mother would ask, and he Bill would then break down the history of the relationship before getting to the point.

Bill sometimes offers non sequiturs that would leave all of us hunched over, and laughing, largely because he misheard or misinterpreted something we said.

“So what you doing tonight?” she once asked Bill while sitting in the kitchen, a tall glass of beer and a bag of potato chips sitting in front of her.

“No thanks – I just had steak,” Bill replied.

My mother laughed for a long time, and didn’t get close to her beer for nearly a half-hour. For many years, she still talked about that exchange, and repeated it over and over, like it was the funniest thing she ever heard.

A tough time in a tough decade

Few memories in my life could remain so vivid: Stepping off the PATH train, and walking what seemed like 20 blocks to the smoldering ruins of the Twin Towers, and breathing in the burning smell of God-knows-what.

It was Sept. 12, 2001, the day after. I was supposed to write a story on the PATH service, and how commuters were coping with the worst tragedy of their lives. Then I was to head south, and perhaps help with the news coverage down there.

But I had little interest in working. I just wanted to see Ground Zero, otherwise known as "the pile;" the day before, I saw Tower One fall, and crumble into a pile of beams and ash, as I drove north on the New Jersey Turnpike. I saw people with video cameras parked along the road, trying to squeeze some glimpse of history in between videos of their family memories.

But, on Sept. 12, as I walked down there, and I got closer, I saw images that seemed to stand out more than "the pile" ever did. I saw people walking around with posters, saying, "Please help me! Have you seen her? Please, can you help me?" They were like the people I used to see at airports who handed out brochures, saying there was "no tomorrow," and "God will be there to save us...believe in him."

To say it was surreal would be cliche. Simply, it was the most depressing thing I ever saw.

I tried to walk past the people, and get to the pile; instead, I just stood there, and saw the people walk around like zombies, holding the pictures close to their chests, or high over their heads, looking so helpless and hapless.

I somehow knew that they would never find those people; what I didn't know was that, eight years later, many of them still seem to be looking for the loved ones they lost, and they're still struggling with the idea that they'll never come back, and that their lives will never be the same.

Back then, I thought I was in another country. This was the United States, I thought, a country with bravado. This was a country that pushed the Germans back on D-Day, and eventually all the way back to Berlin. This was not a country where people look for someone to constantly reassure them, and tell them, "It's OK. Everything is OK. We'll get the bad guys. It's OK."

It's a memory I'll never lose, even as we, as a country, seem to be so detached from it now. Even last week's near-terrorist attack on a Detroit-bound jet didn't seem to ignite the feelings of vengeance that drives people's anger when they've been attacked.

But, in other ways, we're a nation that's still hurting. When we hear about talk of the economy, and we see the poll numbers showing a falling level of confidence in government, I wonder if it has more to do with nation's soul that was wounded eight years ago, and never really recovered from it.

I think that were less detached than we think from the zombie-like atmosphere that I saw in lower Manhattan eight years ago, and we're still looking for some hero to tell us, "It's OK. America will do fine. It's OK."

I've written a lot in this space about the services available for people who are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, particularly people who were victims of 9-11. But, in a way, I feel like we're all suffering from nationwide PTSD, and we're still looking for some something to heal ourselves, and give us a chance to move on.

I think we're still looking for some ticker-tape parade, something that will declare that not only are the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq over, but it's OK to shop again, and it's OK to buy things again, because we're no longer spending money to fight wars against terrorists we can't see.

We're looking for some finality to the worst moment of our lives. But it never came, or it hasn't come yet; indeed, it's only escalated now that President Obama has sent in another 30,000 troops to fight the terrorist war in Afghanistan. It's only continuing when someone somehow finds a way to get the components of a bomb aboard a plane, and comes within minutes of creating our worst tragedy since Sept. 11.

In my personal life, it's continuing because I lost a friend. He's not dead, but he had a business in the World Trade Center that was obliterated when Tower One fell. Rich Kelly, another old Point Pleasant Borough high school buddy of mine, was a hero that day because he ordered people to run to Battery Park, and avoid getting buried under the crush of steel and ash.

The problem, however, was that no one was there to save Rich. Afterward, he tried to recover, buying himself a Porsche and taking me on a ride through Colts Neck, N.J., speeding up to 90 mph on some of the old, two-lane roads that run through one of the state's wealthiest communities. But he ran into trouble as he tried rescue his business life.

I tried to help, but he resisted, to the point that he virtually shut off contact with me. Rich always thought he'd be a millionaire by the time he was 30. Last I heard, he was working around the clock, selling phone systems to businesses and still trying to recover that dream. Leaving him a phone message, or sending him an email is pointless. He won't return any of them.

A lot of people blame President Obama for doing little to turn the nation's confidence around. I don't fall into that category. Mostly, however, I look forward to this new year and new decade. I've heard people talk about the 1960s and 1970s, and how they looked forward to the end of those troubled times just by looking at the clock.

Perhaps time is our only ally here, and we can hope that a new decade will inspire hope. We can hope that people will find a way to get through their trauma, and that they'll find a way to move on as we move farther and farther away from 9-11. We can hope that someone can provide more services, or better services that people can use to help themselves. Or, maybe people find a way to have better access to those services, wherever they may exist.

We can hope that people like Rich can dream of being millionaires again. But if they can't, then maybe they can come to grips with who they are, and perhaps play a role that can inspire people, the same way Rich inspired people to run away from the falling tower.

Keep your holiday cheer at this time of year

The holidays are portrayed as a happy time of celebration. But it's not true for everyone - especially those who have mental illnesses, and even more so in today’s economic climate.

One of every four residents has a mental illness, such as depression or anxiety, which can be exacerbated during the holiday season and further intensified in reaction to financial stress, mental health professionals say.

Regardless of the time of year or the economy, it is critical to manage mental and physical health, recognize signs of mental illness and seek help when needed.

Anyone could experience holiday blues, especially if they experience high levels of stress. During this time of year, stress is commonly related to having unrealistically high expectations for the holidays, said Debra Wentz, chief executive officer of the New Jersey Association of Mental Health Agencies, Inc.

"But this year, it could be even worse because of the turbulent economy,” she said. “It is vitally important for everyone to take steps to manage their stress levels, which can greatly impact both mental and physical health.”

Stress can be reduced by managing what can be controlled. For example, expenses, such as gifts and entertainment, can be reduced. Healthy practices, such as exercising, eating right and getting enough sleep, are also helpful in managing stress, in addition to offering many physical health benefits, professionals say.

Stress and depression can also be related to increased use of alcohol or drugs, especially for individuals who are in the early stages of recovery from addictions. The holidays, with the accompanying stress or social more situations, can also lead to increased drug or alcohol use, professionals say.

Professional help may be needed if any of the following signs become evident:

- persistent sad, anxious or “empty” mood;
- changes in sleep patterns;
- reduced appetite and weight loss, or increased appetite and weight gain; and
- loss of pleasure and interest in once-enjoyable activities; restlessness or irritability.

It is important to realize that most of these symptoms also indicate holiday blues, professionals say. However, holiday blues will dissipate when the season ends and people return to daily routines and no longer experience holiday-related stress. By contrast, depression is indicated by these symptoms lasting for two weeks or longer.

Tiger Woods and the end of journalism as we knew it

Sometimes, in this Great Recession we're in, I think of the state of journalism, particularly the coverage of the Tiger Woods saga. I can't help but remember back to 1992, back when I was a reporter for The Delaware State News, back when a dead end was really dead.

I think back to my first encounters with what I call "journalism of desperation," where reporters and newspapers will do anything to hold onto their jobs, even if it means making a spoiled golfer's sex life your front-page poster boy.

Forget about taxes, war and poverty; a woman swinging a 9-iron at a billionaire athlete will move those stories to the inside pages every time.

Back in 1992, even small newspapers had that mentality, and they never really lost it. The reporters and editors all had that dream of making it big, even if it meant lying, cheating and exaggerating stories until they didn't even resemble news stories anymore. They were merely blogs, just without a cyberspace to give them a port.

Back in 1992, just like now, jobs were sparse, but everybody kept telling me that I was lucky, because I had one (sound familiar?). But it was hard to convince myself of that, especially when I walked up to my apartment window, looked out and saw the crowded truck stops, the farm houses and a big NASCAR raceway that was the largest thing in Delaware's capital city, if not the whole state.

It was hard to convince me of that when my dream of doing meaningful journalism, the kind of stuff that ended the Nixon presidency, was shattered by a 25,000 circulation daily, long before Tiger Woods ever won a tournament. It was shattered by a newspaper where most reporters I knew quit into unemployment rather than wait for a better job offer that would get them away from the editors with the tabloid-inspired ideas.

It's been reinforced by news coverage of Tiger Woods, coverage that really is no better than the stuff the Delaware State News did 17 years ago, when we joked that the newspaper's motto should have been this: "Every story is a good story, especially when it's bad."

As a child, I envisioned looking outside the window of a New York newspaper and seeing the glistening facades of the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center. Instead, at our office in Dover, Del, I saw the cornfield that was never harvested, or so it seemed. There was a rail line that never had any trains. There was a crop duster that never really dusted any crops (yes, just like that famous scene from "North by Northwest").

I worked for a newspaper that still, to this day, does not have its own website. It still has the same design it had in the 1980s. It had its reporters writing front-page recipes. It substituted editorials for a "sound-off" column that included anonymous gripes from people in "Smyrna" and "Camden-Wyoming" that were borderline - if not fully - slanderous.

I felt so empty, and even useless. Just a few years earlier, I was a college journalism star at Rutgers. From 1990 to 1993, however, I was reporter covering something called "Levy Court" in Kent County, Del., run by a man who could say little more than: "George Schulz...he's a good man! Joe Biden...he's a good man!....George Bush...he's a good man!"

I'd go up to him and say, "Mr. Paskey, why did you open up a smelly sewage treatment plant in the middle of a residential community?" and he'd say, "Tom Davis, you're a good man!" and then walk away.

The editors knew this stuff was boring, so it's no wonder they pushed me to write stories I didn't want to write, the Tiger Woods kind-of-stuff that was more about projecting gabby headlines than making people's lives better.

One of them even went to an interview I had a with a woman whose husband served in the Persian Gulf War of 1991. The editor took no notes; when we got back to the office, she not only wrote the story for me - she inserted the quotes, or her version of them. Some of the quotes had electricity, and some even tugged at your heart. But many of those weren't even said.

After a day like that, I often looked out that window, and saw Dover. In my mind, I'd see that view, that dead-end view, and I'd paraphrase what Capt. Willard said in the movie, "Apocalypse Now," when he looked out at the Army men, and the flat ricelands of Saigon, and saw despair.

"Dover," I said to myself. "Shit...I'm still in Dover."

As much as I loved being a journalist, I always wanted more. Ironically, I didn't care so much about the setting, or even the money. I didn't care if there was a cornfield or a skyscraper outside my window. I cared about making an impact, and being in a position where I could bring about change.

From that apartment window, I felt far from that goal, perhaps as far away as the cornfields of Delaware were from the palatial headquarters of The New York Times. Now, 17 years later, I see the Tiger Woods coverage and, at times, I feel as far away as I did then.

I feel powerless, just as I did then, when I watched bogus quotes being insert into my story. I feel powerless as I watch the Woods coverage, realizing that journalism has little choice but cheapen itself, because Tiger Woods sells. With advertising revenue in the tank, what better way to sell your newspaper than to get the king of commercial endorsements on your front page every day?

I see the media lowering itself to the standards of that "sound-off" column, relying on nothing better than rumor and innuendo to drive the news. I see coverage that's repetitive and, frankly, getting so boring that I'd enjoy reading three recipes for Spam Surprise (an actual front page story from the State News) before watching another minute of "The Insider," and getting the latest dirt on Woods.

I feel powerless, just as I did in Delaware, when I couldn't stop the newspaper from publishing a story on a guy who was copycatting the Rodney King beating of 1991, claiming that the cops pounded him into the hospital. The whole thing turned out to be a lie, and I even suggested that to the editors. They printed it anyway.

That's not to say that I haven't made progress in 17 years. I certainly have much more influence now than I did then. I'm in a better position than ever to teach, and to shift attention away from the spoiled golfer of privilege who has never met an endorsement deal he didn't like, who has been wearing that Nike-swoosh hat on his head since he was old enough to crawl.

I've always found, to coin another Vietnam-era cliche, some light at the end of the tunnel. Whether it involved the stress associated with family, and having kids, and everything associated with the life, I always found a way around the dead end. I always found a way to move to a higher level, and put myself in a better position than I was before.

Now I'm not writing about vocabulary-challenged politicians in the middle of Delaware. I'm the transportation writer at The Record and The Star-Ledger. I write stories that got traction during the 2009 gubernatorial election, and one of them may have played a role in Governor Jon Corzine's election defeat.

I teach courses in traditional and digital media at Rutgers University. Now I walk up to the window in my house and see pretty houses on an old, suburban New Jersey street, and see Rockwellian holiday decorations lighting the street, and I no longer feel that pit I had in my stomach, when I felt like my career was going nowhere.

Now I feel an empty feeling, but it's no longer one of hopelessness. It's one of ambition, the feeling of being on the cusp of something good, even great.

But when I sat in the Trenton bureau last night, and I watched the tabloid T.V. shows pop on with their wall-to-wall coverage of Tiger, I couldn't help but get that old sense of helplessness back. I looked at the story I'm writing and I start to think: Who's going to read it? Will they care?

I forget about the accomplishments I've had; I can only think about where journalism is going, and it's not good.

"Tiger," I thought to myself. "Shit....it's still Tiger."

WikiAnswers - Is Tiger Woods mentally ill?

Is Tiger Woods mentally ill?

WikiAnswers - Does Tiger Woods have a mental illness?

Does Tiger Woods have a mental illness?

Healing thy mother's keeper

I have found the book of my life. And I didn't even write it.

I'm not even half-way done with it, but I feel like it's my story already.

"My Mother's Keeper," by Tara Elgin Holley and Joe Holley, is storytelling that's so vivid that the scenes seem to jump off the page. The descriptions are so effective in stimulating the imagination that a movie seems unnecessary (but I'm sure it could be a great one).

It's the story of Tara's mother, Dawn, whose descent into schizophrenia ended a promising singing career. Tara grows up knowing her mother, but not really knowing her sickness - not until she was an adult, really, and she tried to care for her, and keep her from being known as the local "bag lady."

It's a book that speaks to the power of words, and how good writing can help heal the wounds of the soul. Writing can be therapeutic not only for the writer, but also the reader - like myself - who can identify with the plight of the characters. In my case, I know them very well: Dawn and Tara's family resemble my own, in a way.

In my case, my mother had severe obsessive compulsive disorder, and lived with it for much of her life. She inherited the family disease, the symptoms for which were evident with my grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandmother. Like Dawn, they battled their symptoms but never really found solutions.

Like Tara and Joe, I'm writing a book about it, and how I dealt with it all and learned from it. The book is entitled "Generations: A Portrait of a Family Struggling with Mental Illness," and I hope to have it done within the year.

In my book, unlike "My Mother's Keeper," the characters meet their demise too early. Suicide lingers in the shadows of my family, because it's how my great-grandfather, and possibly my great-great-grandmother, ended their lives. With my grandfather and mother, it was self-destruction through alcoholism and personal neglect.

But it's the kind of book that provides validation for your life. When you read about Dawn's impact on the family, you realize that you're not alone, dealing with the problems of finding care for a loved one when there really isn't any that is any good, or good enough.

You realize that you and your family, as well your children are susceptible to what seems like a family curse, and to think that is not the product of paranoia. If others suffer this way, so could you. If others could find a way to manage it, and address these issues before they manifest into something intolerable, so could you.

I've stopped writing over the past few days because I need to read this book. I need to see how Tara and Joe did it, and how they mastered the ability to write about how mental illness is not something that's only suffered by the homeless on the street.

It's something that affects people who live in California - where Tara's mother lived, and where Tara enjoyed a family life, and a sometimes stable one, being cared for by her grandparents before her mother was committed to a psychiatric hospital and her conditioned worsened.

It certainly affects people in Point Pleasant, N.J., a suburban bedroom community at the Jersey Shore, where I grew up, and dealt with my mother's symptoms of OCD most of my life.

There, in 2003, my mother passed away after a fall. She was heading toward the bathroom, worried that her chest felt tight and she was short of breath. The bathroom was where she often went in times of crisis, and she spent hours in there, washing her hands until they were red, and the skin peeled off. But she never made it; she collapsed on the couch, about 30 feet short of her goal.

In that same house, just two years earlier, she drank beer until she passed out in a reclining chair, uttering things that were incoherent before she, too, was committed to a psychiatric hospital. When she was committed, my father found cases of beer and boxes containing moldy pizza stuffed in the refrigerator.

Indeed, one of the opening scenes of the book made me feel like I was living it again. This scene was at Tara's apartment, and it was told by her husband, Joe:

It was a warm night, a beautiful night, but as we walked across the yard and stepped onto the porch, we could tell something was wrong. Empty beer cans were scattered about, and as we started to unlock the door, we could see that it had been forced open. I could feel the hair on the back of my neck prickle and my stomach tighten. Was the burglar inside? Did he have a gun? Should we hurry away and call the police?

As we slowly pushed open the door and peered into the darkness of the living room, I smelled the stabbing odor of urine and stale beer and an unwashed human being. In the darkness, I could barely make out someone sitting on the floor, someone mumbling incoherently.

I was scared, but Tara wasn't. She was angry and upset, not scared. She knew who had invaded her home, her well-ordered life. It was her mother waiting in the darkness. It was Dawn.

Like me, Tara loved her mother, and loved being with her, especially when she was young. In the book, she calls her "mommy," just as I did my mother, long after I wasn't supposed to call her that anymore.

But, when she was young, Tara went out for a car ride with Dawn one day, the door flung open, and Tara found herself on the pavement, with scratches and cuts. Or so her memories tell her.

When Tara played hide-and-go-seek with her mother, Dawn disappeared, and didn't reappear for a while. Instead of her mother coming out from behind the tree, and saying, "Here I am!" Dawn was gone.

Tara found herself in the police station, sitting on a counter top, eating ice cream, waiting for her grandparents to take her home.

The moment reminded me of the time I was 10, and I was chased in a department store by a woman who tried to stuff me in her overcoat. She chased me to the parking lot, and I hid between the cars while she looked for me. Finally, after looking for a good 10 minutes, she walked away and I warily walked back inside.

I found my mother looking at the clothes, the same clothes she obsessed over, and bought so many of them that she stuffed her closet, nearly breaking the sliding door. She had left me alone, in the book section, while she spent nearly an hour looking and trying on the same clothes, over and over. Each piece of clothing wasn't just the right fit....or maybe it was, she'd think, and she'd ask to try them on all over again.

I said to her, "Mommy! A woman just chased me around the store!"

"Oh, really. Wow," she said, half-interested. "Are you all right?"

"Yes," I said.

"OK, well I'm going to buy these clothes," she said. "You wait here while I try them on."

Then she left me along again, standing in the women's clothing section, feeling like I could be snatched at any second.

When Tara went to live with other relatives, she traveled with her mother from Hollywood, taking a long bus ride to Houston. It would be her last sustained experience with her mother, who would be taken away from her once they arrived.

From then on, Dawn would shuttle in-and-out of psychiatric care and institutions for the rest of her life, much as my mother did when her symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder worsened.

With every passing chapter, right up until Dawn grew old, and preferred living on the street, selling cigarettes, Tara offers a voice of frustration, but also a proclamation of love. She always kept her mother's within her grasp, and she was always ready to save her from whatever embarrassment she might cause, and she was ready to defend her whenever she was mocked or mistreated. She was always ready to commit her whenever she was a danger to herself, but she also realized that she could not always stop Dawn from being Dawn.

At the heart of my book is my mother, and how we showed our love in a similar way. In my mother's final years, we couldn't get close to her because she was afraid of our germs. She wouldn't let us kiss her unless it was all the way under ear, where her skin was red and chapped from the constant washing or her neck and face.

But we did the best we could, and like Tara, we tried to stabilize and comfort her life. We always wondered if we didn't do enough, even at the end, when we finally addressed my mother's battle with OCD after years of neglect, but it just seemed too late as her physical health declined.

Six years later, after reading Tara and Joe's book, I realize now that, perhaps, we did what we could do.

Neil Young/Heart of Gold

I want to live,
I want to give
I've been a miner
for a heart of gold.
It's these expressions
I never give
That keep me searching
for a heart of gold
And I'm getting old.
Keeps me searching
for a heart of gold
And I'm getting old.

I've been to Hollywood
I've been to Redwood
I crossed the ocean
for a heart of gold
I've been in my mind,
it's such a fine line
That keeps me searching
for a heart of gold
And I'm getting old.
Keeps me searching
for a heart of gold
And I'm getting old.

Keep me searching
for a heart of gold
You keep me searching
for a heart of gold
And I'm growing old.
I've been a miner
for a heart of gold.

More troops will mean more stress

Once President Obama announces tonight that more than 30,000 additional troops will be sent to Afghanistan, don't think of it as a solution or a Band-Aid.

Don't think that war is ever a solution to problems. At best, it's a measure of prevention; the use of force is sometimes - though rarely - necessary to secure the safety the United States.

Think this: Another 30,000 troops will eventually become veterans who will be at risk for post-traumatic stress disorder.

Remember that there will be more people who not only will be seeking assistance for their physical wounds, but also for their damaged state of mental health.

Since we've had two war fronts since 2003, we've already seen evidence of the impact.

The number of soldiers and Marines diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder jumped tenfold from 2003 to 2007, according to statistics released by the Army’s surgeon general, as reported by Stars and Stripes.

The military attributed the rise in the Army numbers in part to the increase in the overall number of soldiers exposed to combat, but also better record-keeping by the service. But soldiers realize that, if there was no war, the numbers would be significantly lower.

And the numbers could go up even higher since the symptoms of PTSD sometimes don't appear until 10 to 20 years after service.

There are places for veterans with mental illness to turn and find ways to escape a life of ruin and despair.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's Center for Mental Health Services is accepting applications for the Jail Diversion and Trauma Recovery Program's "Priority to Veterans grants."

The purpose of this program is to support expansion of trauma-integrated jail diversion programs to reach the growing number of individuals with post traumatic stress disorder and trauma-related disorders involved in the justice system.

In recognition of the dramatically higher prevalence of trauma related illnesses among veterans, this program will prioritize eligibility for veterans, organizers say. Click here for more information on this grant program, along with the request for applications.