Just to add to what I was saying earlier about Trump's statement on PTSD.
Interestingly, Obama just talked about this 5 days ago. And this is how it should be addressed.
"And, you know, sometimes the weight of battle comes home," Obama said.
That "weight" is reflected in the high rate of suicide among U.S. veterans. About 20 veterans a day commit suicide, a recent Veterans Affairs study found.
Suicides, in case you weren't aware, have been on the uptick over the past decade and a half, increasing 24 percent from 1999 through 2014, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2014, more than 7,400 vets — about 18 percent of all suicides that year — took their lives.
"This is something we just have to talk about more," Obama told Amanda Souza before outlining steps he's taking — or that need to be taken — to combat it.
"The first is I have instructed the Joint Chiefs and up and down the chain of command that they have a responsibility to de-stigmatize mental health issues and issues of PTSD and help to explain to everybody in all of the units under their command that there's nothing weak about asking for help," he said.
Obama said that mental illness, much like a "broken leg" or physical injury, can't be ignored.
"If, as a consequence of the extraordinary stress and pain that you are witnessing, typically, in a battlefield, something inside you feels like it's wounded, it's just like a physical injury. You've got to get help."