Doctor Helping Veterans with PTSD; Foundation Helping Veterans with PTSD
HARLOW: Before the break, we heard about a new approach to the treating veterans with PTSD. It's an approach totally without medication. Adam Banotai is with me now, former staff sergeant and squad leader with the U.S. Marines. He suffered from PTSD. He is the founder of the One Fight Foundation. It is a nonprofit that helps so many veterans combat this disease. He joins me now. Thank you for being here.</s>ADAM BANOTAI, FORMER SERGEANT, SQUAD LEADER, U.S. MARINES & FOUNDER, ONE FIGHT FOUNDATION: Absolutely, Poppy. Thanks for having me.</s>HARLOW: We will talk more about the good work your foundation is doing in a moment. But I wonder if you agree with the doctor in Carol's piece, if PTSD can be wholly treated without medication.</s>BANOTAI: Absolutely not. I think any undergrad health science major could find dozens of studies that support the use of psychoactive medication in therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder. Now, that said, it shouldn't be a front line treatment. The best therapy for PTSD is psycho therapy, counseling, talking to someone. But when we are talking about the V.A., we are already seeing a huge shortage of providers, especially mental health providers. So when you have the choice of doing a 15 minute med-rec appointment when you can prescribe and follow up in 30 to 60 days or a 30 to 60 minute appointment you are repeating weekly for months and years at a time, it's a logistical issue.</s>HARLOW: There's just no comparison.</s>BANOTAI: That's not a good excuse but --</s>HARLOW: That's not the way veterans should be treated to ever have to go through a 15 minute appointment. You heard the guy in the piece say he was handed a bag of pills, do you worry about over-medication, over-prescription?</s>BANOTAI: I do, and I think it's part of a lack of continuity of care. One doctor is not aware of what another doctor within the V.A. system is prescribing so you are getting cocktails that are becoming lethal. We have seen overdoses resulting in deaths within the Department of Veterans Affairs, both in psychiatric medications and opiates also.</s>HARLOW: 22 veterans in this country per day take their own lives.</s>BANOTAI: Right.</s>HARLOW: Does America fully understand? Does the American civilians -- do they fully understand PTSD?</s>BANOTAI: I don't think so. I think there's a huge stigma and that's with all mental health illness in the civilian sector and with veterans. It's like the gentleman in this piece said, he said, I'm not crazy. Mental illness, mental health is not about crazy or not crazy. It's about bad things happen to good people and how that affects your life. And one of the things, the tenets I believe in came from retired Marine General Jim Mattis (ph), who said it's not about post-traumatic stress. It's about post-traumatic growth. You have done something so extraordinary that impacted your life in such a way that so few people have done that, of course, it's going to change you. But change isn't bad. Change is just different and perhaps for the better.</s>HARLOW: The hard thing, I can imagine, as someone who has never served this country in that way, is coming back and being surrounded by people who have no idea what you went through. They cannot live it with you. And they just -- you can't understand. So that's part of the fight that you and your team are doing with the One Fight Foundation.</s>BANOTAI: Right. And what happened was people say, I can't even imagine what it was like and it's like, no, you really can't.</s>HARLOW: You can't.</s>BANOTAI: Exactly. So what we did was we founded One Fight Foundation. I founded it with my team to combat veteran suicide by implementing local peer-to-peer support networks for veterans to seek camaraderie and mentorship when in crisis. So a lot of veterans don't trust doctors. They don't trust the V.A. But they trust each other. All we want to do is facilitate that communication for veterans to reach out in time of crisis to those that know them best and understand their troubles the most. That's other veterans.</s>HARLOW: Tell people where they can go for more help. We will put it on the screen as well.</s>BANOTAI: You can find us online, www.onefightfoundation.org. We are on Facebook, onefightfoundaton, or follow us on Twitter with numeral 1team1fight.</s>HARLOW: Adam Banotai, thank you for your service and thank you for your continued service to this country.</s>BANOTAI: Thank you. Thank you for having me.</s>HARLOW: We appreciate it very much.</s>BANOTAI: Thank you.</s>HARLOW: We are going to take a quick break. We'll be right back on the other side with what I hope you find to be an inspiring story about a company that is trying to make things a little bit better on the south side of Chicago.</s>LORI WEISE, CNN HERO: I really believe most people want what's best for their pet. Now, do they have the resources? No.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't want to lose him. I got so attached.</s>WEISE: So many times, people just feel they have to surrender their animal. When in reality, if they understood all the resources, they are happy to keep their animal.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I will make some phone calls to see if there's anybody that would be willing to foster.</s>WEISE: I started an organization which offers resources to low-income families so they can keep their pets. The areas we work tend to have the higher crime rates, densely populated, and there's lots of animals. There's a lot of people that are either not employed, underemployed, but that does not mean that people don't love their animals. Are you interested in a free neuter for him? We offer free spay and neuter, vaccines --</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We can handle this.</s>WEISE: -- dog food, medical services.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my god! Here's mommy! Come here.</s>WEISE: Our job is to find out who is this person, how can we best help them.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's crazy because I'm a foster child and then you're fostering my dog.</s>WEISE: We are offering them as much as we can to be successful with their pet.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The boy who loves to play.</s>WEISE: It gives me a lot of joy to see the dogs with their family.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He's so nervous all the time.</s>WEISE: Everybody in life needs to find their purpose. And for me, it was helping people with their animals.