On Thursday January 16. 2015, we gave people at Washington Square Park a survey on veterans to see if people realized the issues veterans face. Our survey had five questions. The first was “do you know one out four veterans is homeless.” The second one was “do you know every 65 seconds a veterans commits suicide”. The third one was “do you know the military does not provide free PTSD medication for veterans.” The fourth one was “did you know twenty percent of veterans returning from war suffer from PTSD.” The fifth one was “did you know veterans accounts for twenty percent of all suicides.” We gave the survey to about 25 people. The people who we interviewed who were born after the Vietnam War did not seem to be as informed as the older individuals we spoke with and people in their early twenties and thirties who remember the Gulf War and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We believe that if people grew up during a war they are more likely to be more informed about veteran issues. We also found that people who had veterans in their families not surprisingly knew more about veterans.
Some of our results were troubling because many people didn’t even know homelessness was an issue for veterans. All those surveyed did not know that veterans represent twenty percent of all suicides. Most people also did not know that the military does not provide free PTSD medication for veterans. However, almost seventy-five percent of those surveyed did know that many veterans suffer from PTSD. Overall, the survey taught us that people need to learn more about the issues facing veterans. If people were more aware of the difficulties veterans experience they might support more benefits and treatment for veterans. While we think the survey was useful and informative, the questions about how frequently veterans commit suicide was too specific and not as helpful in gathering information about topic than the other questions. In addition, although we collected some demographic information, it might have useful for our survey to have specifically asked some demographic questions about whether they knew veterans and their age. However, we did not want to offend people by asking their age. I think this experience helped us and inspired us to teach people about the struggles that veteran faced coming back from war.
