Reddit mentions of The Inside Battle: Our Military Mental Health Crisis

https://www.amazon.com/Inside-Battle-Military-Mental-Health/dp/0615703674/ref=nodl_


https://books.google.com/books/about/Long_term_Outcomes_of_Military_Service.html?id=CGoyswEACAAJ&source=kp_book_description

Soldiers Once: My Brother and the Lost Dreams of America's Veterans by Catherine Whitney


https://www.amazon.com/Thank-Your-Service-David-Finkel/dp/1250121469/ref=mp_s_a_1_6?keywords=thank+you+for+your+service&qid=1571810300&sprefix=thank+you+for+you&sr=8-6

I’m going to start by saying I come from a military family and I have volunteered with and for veterans and veterans’ causes. My father served 20 years. I have nothing but respect for people who serve in the military in general. But military service in and of itself isn’t honorable, and it is almost nobody’s best option.

I obviously have an opinion on whether he should join up or not. Assuming your brother was born in 2001, the US has been at war for literally his entire life. The military recruitment agenda tends to treat 18 year olds, particularly POC and/or low income kids, as human shields. If he’s got the grades and the extra curriculars to qualify for officer training, he has a better chance, I guess, but officers get killed too. As I said at the top, I come from a military family and have lived in a few military towns, have volunteered with veterans at nursing homes, etc, and even the ones who’ve never seen combat are affected by their time in the military for years - decades. Anecdotally, many of them have symptoms of depression and PTSD, substance abuse problems, and trouble socializing. Vietnam and Korea were baaaaaad in terms of physical, emotional, and moral trauma, but the current conflicts we are involved in seem in my opinion to be doing a much more thorough job of destroying our soldiers. There may be fewer deaths, as modern medicine can be miraculous, but imagine sustaining injuries so catastrophic that they’d have killed you a decade or two earlier, imagine the pain and the loss and the anger you’d feel.

If it’s truly a matter of wanting to serve in the military for his own moral or personal honor-related reasons, to satisfy the drive to give of yourself to serve something bigger than you, I don’t know if it’ll matter what he reads. There’s plenty of reading material that will reinforce that drive of his.

If it’s about the GI Bill or other “benefits” they tell you about in the brochures and the recruiters talk about ad nauseam, it’s a swindle and none of those benefits are worth the cost. Especially considering the shit pay.

Best of luck to both of you and I hope your brother makes the best decision for himself. I also hope for his safety. Take care