Helping Vets with Isolation

(StatePoint) As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of veterans and active duty military personnel are on lockdown, many suffering from traumatic brain injuries, post-traumatic stress disorder, or substance abuse. With the additional challenge of isolation, finding ways to combat depression, anxiety, and loneliness is critical.

That’s why Help Heal Veterans (Heal Vets), a nonprofit founded during the Vietnam War, has gone into overdrive, shipping more than 90,000 free craft kits since the beginning of the pandemic and creating a newly designed kit to help veterans make the masks they need to stay healthy and safe.

Operating on the principle that not all medicine comes in a bottle, Heal Vets distributes kits in craft categories like masks, leatherwork, models, woodwork, jewelry, paintby-numbers, needlecrafts, poster art, scrapbooks, and more. Crafting can provide therapeutic and

Photo courtesy of Help Heal Veterans CraŌ care specialist Kathy Vanasse prepares craŌ kits for veterans.

rehabilitative benefits, including improving motor skills, cognitive functioning, memory, and dexterity, and can help alleviate feelings of anger and the severity of negative behaviors.

Kits have been distributed to more than 90 Veterans Affairs (VA) medical centers around the country and a large number of military bases, state veteran homes, and other locations where the need is great.

“The coronavirus is overwhelming, but being alone in a pandemic crisis can be terrifying and deeply debilitating,” says Joe McClain, retired Navy captain and Help Heal Veterans CEO. “Our goal is to give our veterans what they need to heal during this time of enforced isolation.”

With many of the nation’s veterans labeled high-risk now at home with little contact from others, (no visitors, no family allowed, no volunteers and limited staff interaction), it is particularly important to address suicide prevention, according to McClain.

To learn more about Heal Vets and the organization’s COVID-19 efforts, as well as to find out how you can help, visit HealVets.org.