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Advocates for veterans report an increase in the number of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans facing charges such as domestic violence, firearms violations, breach of peace and drunken driving.A Connecticut lawmaker says the court system should be able to identify troubled veterans and refer them to mental health specialists, the same way family courts and drug courts work."Our troubled veterans may not need to be locked up if their combat experience has led to psychological wounds," said Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney, a New Haven Democrat who has introduced legislation to create a separate criminal docket for veterans.This mirrors actions elsewhere in the country. Some states are setting up veterans' courts or enacting laws to deal with veteran offenders. In 2008, Buffalo, N.Y., created the first Veterans Treatment Court after a judge noticed that hundreds of veterans were showing up in his courtroom facing minor charges. California and Minnesotahavepassed legislation to allow nonviolent veterans to forgo jail time if they can prove that their combat experience played a role in the criminal behavior.Looney said he introduced his bill after hearing stories about returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans in Connecticut and across the nation ending up in jail. Connecticut also is using a $2 million grant from the federal Center for Mental Health Services to devise a program that will keep veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder out of jail.

Reluctant To Report SymptomsPeople with experience in overseas conflicts, or who work with those who have recently returned, often refer to one overriding symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder in recent veterans."Anger is a really big problem," said Jay White, an Iraq veteran and counselor at the Hartford Vet Center in Rocky Hill. It's one aftermath of the "high-octane environment" veterans experience in war, he said.According to the Connecticut Department of Veterans Affairs, 16,500 state residents have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. That number includes soldiers in the Connecticut Guard, the reserves and active duty personnel. The high number of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress disorder presents a large challenge for the criminal justice system. And given that President Barack Obama last week authorized an additional 17,000 troops to go to Afghanistan this year, the number of people who could eventually experience PTSD is likely to increase.PTSD, triggered by an event or events so extreme that they cause trauma, can shatter a soldier's sense of safety and trust and cause a constellation of reactions, in addition to anger.

Tom Berger, former chairman of the PTSD committee of the Maryland-based Vietnam Veterans of America, said post-traumatic stress can easily manifest itself in criminal behavior. "It interferes with your thinking process. You have high anxiety. You do strange things like taking U-turns, or carrying loaded weapons in your car," said Berger, who has worked to change the criminal justice system for veterans. James Campbell's experience may typify that of many veterans. The 28-year-old Middletown resident now works as a veterans' employment representative for the state Department of Veterans Affairs. He said he returned home in a hyper-vigilant, ready-for-battle state of mind. Road rage and driving drunk were problems."When I got back, I felt I was indestructible, especially when I was drinking. I didn't care whether I would get into a car and drive drunk," he said. Berger said jail diversion programs should include treatment and recovery and a mentoring component. He said some Vietnam veterans incarcerated when they returned home from war remain in jail. Jim Tackett, director of veterans' services for the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, said the state's jail diversion program will work closely with mental health officials, the veterans administration and the criminal justice system to identify veterans who need help. "Some veterans who commit minor crimes that are the direct result of traumatic wartime experiences need treatment, not incarceration," Tackett said.

I was in Iraq in 2004. From the day we had arrived home to the day we were scheduled to return to Iraq was exactly nine months. The pressure to prepare ourselves quickly was intense. When the first Marine came to my office and asked to see the psychiatrist about some troubling issues from our time in Iraq, I was sympathetic. I said, "No problem." When another half dozen or so Marines approached me with the same request, I was only somewhat concerned.But when all of them and several more returned from their appointments with recommendations for discharge, I'll admit I was alarmed. Suddenly I was not as concerned about their mental health as I was about my company's troop strength.

As all those Marines in my company began filtering out, some from essential positions, I started to worry about the welfare of those remaining. I worried, quite naturally, that if the exodus continued, we might not have enough to accomplish our mission or to survive on the battlefield. My sympathies for those individuals claiming post-traumatic stress began to wane. A commander cannot serve in earnest both the mission and the psychologically wounded. When the two come in conflict, as they routinely do as a result of repeated deployments, the commander will feel an internal and institutional pressure to maintain the integrity of his unit. I did. And there begins a grassroots, albeit subconscious, resistance to Mullen's plan to destigmatize the people who seek help. Because as much as I cared about my Marines, it was difficult to look upon those who sought to leave without suspicion or even mild contempt.

Where psychological and traumatic brain injuries can still, to some extent, be doubted and debated, and when their treatment stands in opposition to troop strength and to mission accomplishment, the needs of those wounded service members will be subordinated.The result by necessity, which we are already witnessing today, will be dubious treatment protocols within the military aimed at retention, diagnosed soldiers returning to the battlefield, and a slowly diminished emphasis on screening. It will happen. It has begun already. There will be no policy shift. There will be no change in the language we hear from our leaders. But we will know all too well that our soldiers are still not being properly treated by the ever-increasing number of suicides that occur.

The few veterans courts in the nation are modeled on drug courts that allow defendants to avoid prison in exchange for strict monitoring. Most are only a couple of months old and it is difficult to track their effectiveness, but the results from the first court, which opened in Buffalo, N.Y., in January 2008, are striking. Of the more than 100 veterans who have passed through that court, only two had to be returned to the traditional criminal court system because they could not shake narcotics or criminal behavior, said Judge Robert Russell - a far lower rate of recidivism than in drug courts. "It's the right thing to do for those who have made a number of sacrifices for us," Russell said. "If they've been damaged and injured in the course of their service . . . and we can help them become stable, we must." There are no comprehensive statistics on how often veterans get in trouble with the law, and the majority never become entangled with the legal system. But psychiatrists and law enforcement officials agree that the traumas of combat can lead to addiction and criminality. Studies have shown that as many as half of the troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer post-traumatic stress and other disorders, and mental health is the second-most-treated ailment for returning veterans in the Department of Veterans Affairs system.

Since Russell's court started, veterans courts have opened in Orange and Santa Clara counties in California; Tulsa; and Anchorage, Alaska. Pittsburgh, southern Wisconsin, Phoenix and Colorado Springs, Colo., are opening or considering new courts this year. Some in Congress have proposed a federal program to help spread veterans courts across the country. Most veterans courts admit only nonviolent felony offenders, though some include violent crimes. Defendants are required to plead guilty to their crimes. In exchange for a suspended sentence that can include prison time, they must consent to regular court visits, counseling and random drug testing. Should they waver from the straight and narrow, their sentences go into effect. Orange County, Calif., Superior Court Judge Wendy Lindley started her veterans court in November after a young Iraq war veteran on her docket died of a drug overdose. "It was horrible," she said. As in most of the nation's nascent veterans courts, many of the defendants in Lindley's court fought in the Vietnam or Persian Gulf wars. But she has seen a few Iraq war veterans, all of whom had clean histories before joining the military but started getting into trouble after they returned.

Baker had planned to ride his bicycle from Norman to Washington, D.C., and Gettysburg, Pa., to Marseilles, Ill., to support a new flag designed to honor fallen members of the military, the Norman Transcript reported March 8. He planned to fly the Honor and Remember Flag from his bike and encourage people along the way to sign a petition urging Congress to adopt the flag as a new national symbol by passing HR Bill 1034.

Baker was injured while serving as a firefighter in Kuwait in the 1990s when a Scud missile struck his barracks. Diane Zellner said he had seemed healthy enough to undertake the bike trip. "He was doing well, so this kind of took us by surprise," she said. Baker struggled with his health, but what people admired about him was how he moved forward despite his health problems and disabilities, she said. "He struggled every day, but he lived, he was going to do what he wanted to do," she said. Before he died, Baker made several blog posts from the road that can be read at www.honorandremember.org/kevin.html. His last post was Wednesday near Sherman, Texas. He said the weather was raining and 34 degrees, so he said the Honor Guard from Louisiana would pick him up and take him somewhere warmer. "He was doing something he loved," Diane Zellner said. "This was something he was passionate about."

Getting military personnel home safely requires much more than an airplane ride and a cursory post-deployment checkup, says Pat Canerdy, administrator of the Army Reserve's Chattanooga-based 591st Transportation Detachment. It's a lesson officials and families alike have had to learn the hard way throughout the global war on terror, which has led to historic highs in suicide and divorce rates.Just more than 5 percent of Army suicide victims had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a recent Department of Defense news release, and 17 percent reportedly had problems with substance abuse. Meanwhile, at least 60 percent had relationship problems.

Obama said her commitment to improving family support began two years ago at the beginning of her husband's campaign, after hearing about the challenges military spouses faced. "I spent a lot of my time talking about issues that really affected me as a working mom," Obama said. "I met more and more military families who were not just struggling with those basic issues that all civilians are dealing with, but they were tacking on multiple tours of duty and having to figure out how do you keep a family together when you moved 10 times in the same number of years." "I was moved by the power of those stories, and I committed to myself then that if I was blessed with the opportunity to be the nation's First Lady, then I would make the issues facing military families a top priority for me," she added. The First Lady said some of the issues military families faced included quality education on military posts, adequate childcare for families who live on- and off-post and for military spouses, how to balance higher education, careers and family support during deployments.

She said a lot of family members spoke to her about streamlining the available support so that it is more consistent at all bases. She said it is equally important to make information available to families to prevent hardships once they transfer to different bases.

Obama wants to put a call out to the nation to be mindful that we are a nation at war. "There are troops out there right now fighting for our freedom and our security," she pointed out. "When they go, they leave behind families. The First Lady extended the opportunity to help military Families to the rest of the nation, whether they lived in military communities or not. "It's incumbent upon us as a nation to look in our schools and figure out which child has parents that's deployed and be aware of that and be conscious of that," she said. "It's incumbent upon us to look in our own back yards to our neighbors and to figure out who's out there serving our country and what kind of support that they need. We need to make sure, as a community, that we're coming together around those families."