Homeless Veterans with Anxiety
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Abstract
This paper examines the homeless veterans with anxiety and how does gardening therapy help them to cope with their anxiety. In America, there are huge ratio of homeless people including veterans of three wars such as Vietnamese, Afghan and Iraqi. The first section is about the introduction of the homeless veterans and how they are feeling with anxiety. The second section is about literature review about homeless veterans, and last section is what method we will going to examine and what are the findings of the topic.
Table of Contents
TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u Introduction PAGEREF _Toc2486697 \h 4
Literature Review PAGEREF _Toc2486698 \h 5
Method PAGEREF _Toc2486699 \h 6
Design PAGEREF _Toc2486700 \h 6
Operation definitions PAGEREF _Toc2486701 \h 6
Measurement scales PAGEREF _Toc2486702 \h 6
Participants PAGEREF _Toc2486703 \h 6
Materials PAGEREF _Toc2486704 \h 7
Risks PAGEREF _Toc2486705 \h 7
Procedure PAGEREF _Toc2486706 \h 7
Statistical Analysis PAGEREF _Toc2486707 \h 7
Introduction
America has a tent city for the homeless. Here, people who have lost their homes can get a place to sleep, shower, clean clothes and necessary medical care. People of different ages live there. It would seem that this is in many countries. But in America, not just the homeless, they are veterans of three wars - Vietnamese, Afghan, and Iraqi. After returning from service to his native country, with psychological traumas and physical injuries, each of them was literally on the street. It is believed that in the US, veterans are respected and honored that they receive decent pensions, free housing, education and medical insurance. In fact - this is nothing more than a myth. Few people know that many American veterans, having returned from the war, turn into homeless people and street beggars.
The reason is the indifference of the American authorities, who do not want veterans either to provide housing or to employ. It turns out that while billions of dollars are being spent on maintaining the American military machine, thousands of former military personnel join the ranks of the homeless, and according to statistics, 18 of them die every day with suicide. But considerable funds from the state budget are allocated to attract new soldiers to the ranks of the modern American army.
Gardens therapy is helpful for the homeless veterans to improve their anxiety. Gardens have always been considered only as simple recreational places, like parks or simple garden rooms. The healing power that ornamental plants may have is rarely considered. What do they mean when they are located in a medical facility? Those effects have been studied since the 80s and the positive results obtained are scientifically proven. Their use is becoming more indispensable each day in order to lower costs and the hospitalization time of patients, and also to improve their life quality when long-term care is required. The fundamental elements that a landscape designer must know and should take into account to make a good project are the subject matter of this paper.
Literature Review
According to Brown (2008), about 50% of homeless veterans in the United States suffer from serious mental illnesses, according to data from the National Coalition of Homeless Veterans (NCHV), some of which have not yet served in combat. 70% have substance abuse problems, whether alcohol or drugs. Ex-soldiers represent 12% of the total adult homeless in the country. Among the male population, they represent 20%. And their poverty levels are higher than the average among the most populated family units. The methodological flaws of this research is that it is not generalized on little amount of population.
According to the official terminology, a person without a home in the US is one who sleeps on the street or in shelters. That is, it lacks its own accommodation. According to estimates from the Department of Housing, about 57,800 veterans are in that situation on any given night. In the US as a whole there are about 22 million ex-soldiers out of a total population of 326 million people.
Although this is not a new problem, most of the plans to combat this scourge have been promoted in recent decades. The Administration currently offers health care to some 150,000 homeless veterans and financial assistance to some 40,000. In parallel, public-private partnerships have been developed to provide accommodation, which, according to the NCHV, has contributed to reducing the number of homeless veterans by 70% since 2005. However, it is estimated that 1.4 million ex-soldiers run the risk of running out of houses and falling into that fateful spiral (Greenberg, et.al.2018).
After the increase in the number of homeless veterans over the past ten years, the number of such people has declined in the United States, according to Stars and Stripes, citing data from the Department of Housing (Kizer, Demakis, & Feussner, 2000).
The volunteers in all of the United States counted 37,878 veterans living on the street or in shelters — this is 2,142 (or 5.4%) less than in January 2017. The number of homeless veterans decreased in 34 states, and homelessness among women veterans decreased by 10%: from 3,571 people in 2017 to 3,219. More than 4,000 veterans found homes in 2017 using a special program in which they receive housing vouchers from the housing department. Reducing homelessness among veterans, which is announced today, shows that the strategies we use to help the most vulnerable veterans to get stable housing work (Greenberg, et.al.2018).
In the US state of Minnesota, there was a march of veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, organized to attract the attention of the authorities and society to the frighteningly high suicide rate among veterans: about 23 people commit suicide per day. In the US, half of the veterans suffer from mental disorders, and 23% of retired soldiers are homeless. According to the veterans themselves, the state does not take care of its military sufficiently.
According to Söderback, Söderström, & Schälander, (2004), The garden of a Hospital must have everything necessary that encourages a healthy life. Tree should help to forget the weakness and the concerns and encourage appositive attitude . The spaces have than having grass and bushes of flowers .Small and noisy streams that run between bushes of flowers and noisy waterfalls between shrubs arrive to our ears Making group with many plants to strengthen the aromas. the song of the Birds who find repair in the trees encourage us with their singing rejoicing our heart.
Ulrich in his first study in 1984 deals about the relation of hospitalization time, the use of analgesics and the possibility of seeing nature through a window of the hospital in patients of a department of surgery. All the investigations have been documented during the years 1981 up1992, followed by Hartig between 1991 and1996 and in parallel with those of Clare Marcus and Barnes in 1994 (Gabrielian, et.al. 2018).
Method
Design
This paper is examining the homeless veterans and their problems in America. How can they cope with the help of garden theory?
Operation definitions
Homeless veterans are persons who have served in the armed forces who are homeless or living without access to secure and appropriate accommodation.
Anxiety is a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease about something with an uncertain outcome.
Garden therapy as the engagement of a person in gardening and plant-based activities, facilitated by a trained therapist, to achieve specific therapeutic treatment goals.
Measurement scales
The measurement scale used for this paper is the interview from the homeless veterans and past literature to support this study.
The independent variable is homeless veterans and dependent variable is level of anxiety. This is qualitative research. The conditions to meet the participants in this study is that there should no hurt feeling of anyone. They should be treated in a respected way.
Participants
The ideal participants are the homeless veterans from different regions of the USA. The recruiting of the participants is depending on the age, gender and location of the participants. The informed consent is presented to the participants in the form of agreement among the researcher and the participants. Confidentiality is my responsibility to keep undisclosed data with which one is trusted. I will intend to keep their information for their betterment and help them to reduce their anxiety.
Materials
The physical material will have used to conduct this study is the tape recorder, paper and pen to record the data of the homeless veterans. Likert scale will be used for this study.
Risks
The potential risks for participants in this study is that they might provide more negative response in respect to gain the sympathy. The new treatment may not be effective in your case, even if it benefits other people who participate in the study. It is also possible that the results reveal that the new treatment is not as effective as those that were available. My plan to mitigate those risks by not showing that this study will help them to solve the issue of anxiety.
Procedure
Firstly, the participants from all over the US is randomly selected.
Secondly, the interviews will be held to examine their behavior.
Thirdly, the analysis of data and finding of the data in order to examines the level of anxiety among the homeless veterans and how garden therapy them to reduce their anxiety.
Statistical Analysis
For this assignment, I will use SPSS to analysis the data that is collected from the homeless veterans. The sensitivity level will be set according to the data collected. The results will be considered significant as they measure the anxiety.
References
Brown, W. B. (2008). Another emerging ‘storm’: Iraq and Afghanistan veterans with PTSD in the criminal justice system. Justice Policy Journal, 5(2), 1-37. Retrieved from: http://thebunkerproject.org/images/pdf1.pdf
Gabrielian, S., Bromley, E., Hamilton, A. B., Vu, V. T., Alexandrino Jr, A., Koosis, E., & Young, A. S. (2018). Problem solving skills and deficits among homeless veterans with serious mental illness. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry.
Greenberg, J. M., Wynn, J. K., Lee, J., Hellemann, G., Gabrielian, S., & Green, M. F. (2018). Resilience in homeless veterans: Clinical and cognitive correlates. Psychiatric rehabilitation journal.
Kizer, K. W., Demakis, J. G., & Feussner, J. R. (2000). Reinventing VA health care: systematizing quality improvement and quality innovation. Medical care, I7-I16.
Söderback, I., Söderström, M., & Schälander, E. (2004). Horticultural therapy: the ‘healing garden’and gardening in rehabilitation measures at Danderyd Hospital Rehabilitation Clinic, Sweden. Pediatric rehabilitation, 7(4), 245-260. Retrieved from: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/0ca1/4c3ab836b4e3f27a461d8715ae88fc798eab.pdf
Washington, D. L., Yano, E. M., McGuire, J., Hines, V., Lee, M., & Gelberg, L. (2010). Risk factors for homelessness among women veterans. Journal of health care for the poor and underserved, 21(1), 82-91. Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Elizabeth_Yano/publication/41509998_Risk_Factors_for_Homelessness_Among_Women_Veterans/links/02bfe50e62388d4fc2000000/Risk-Factors-for-Homelessness-Among-Women-Veterans.pdf
Appendices
Appendix A
Informed consent
To be completed by the participant in the research project :
Name : ...............................................................
I agree to participate in this research project under the conditions set out therein.
I can withdraw from this project at any time, without giving reasons, by making my decision known to the Principal Investigator or to one of his team members. I have also been informed that my participation in this project may be interrupted without my prior consent, in certain cases as defined in the research.
I will keep a copy of the data and the completed and signed consent form.
For samples / data:
I ask for their destruction at the end of the project.
I authorize their conservation in order to :
their reuse for other research projects
their transfer to another structure, another laboratory in Tunisia or abroad
I understand that any reuse or transfer of my samples / data will be done only after favorable opinion of an Ethics Committee.
Signature : ............................................................ Date : ................................................
Appendix B
Homeless Veterans with Anxiety
Name
Age
Gender
Religion
Description
How do you feel living homeless?
Do you get proper food here?
Do have any interest in gardening?
Do you feel regretted after having the war?
Appendix C
1. The unexpected is bothering me enormously
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2. It frustrates me not to have all the information I need
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3. Uncertainty prevents me from enjoying life to the full
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4. We should warn everything to avoid surprises
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5. A slight surprise can spoil everything, even the best of schedules
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6. When it's time to act, uncertainty paralyzes me.
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7. When I am uncertain, I cannot go forward
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8. I always want to know what the future holds
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