Third, if you need mental health treatment, go to mental health. Stop caring about what other people say. If you need help, go get it.

I'm going to have to disagree with you here. Actually seeking mental health treatment was the worst possible thing I could have done for my mental health. Post Iraq deployment (while stationed in Kuwait) I began having issues. I thought telling professionals would help, and that I'd simply be able to focus on dealing with it. So my young, PTSD stricken self told a psychologist how I really felt.

My unit flipped the fuck out. For actually voicing how we all felt I was singled out and treated horribly. It's not like I was raving mad or anything, I just calmly explained how fucked up all this war stuff was.

It was the most dehumanizing experience of my life. Being placed under 24 hour surveillance by the same people I had just been deployed with doesn't maybe sound bad, but you can't understand what that actually means.

The trauma of how I was treated haunts me more than the trauma I was seeking help for.

When we redeployed stateside the paperwork just didn't follow. It's like everything they put me through was swept under the rug. It should still be on digital records right? medical files. I have those files, and it's basically a forgotten bullet point that nobody cared to remember about when they could be spending their energy on more pointless things in garrison.

I finished out the next 2 years on my contract and peaced on out of that hell hole. Maybe it's just the Army, or maybe it was just my unit and the auxiliary units involved.

The stigma is unreal. If you're in the military, go find a therapist off base. Otherwise brace yourself for how sucky it's going to be.