This page is the first focus of Vets Healing Map. It is written for veterans, service members, and the people who love them. It is not a treatment plan.
If you need help tonight
- Veterans Crisis Line: call or text 988, then press 1, or chat at veteranscrisisline.net. Confidential. 24/7.
- If there is immediate danger, call 911.
- You do not have to be enrolled in VA care to use the Crisis Line.
A practical order of operations
- Stabilize. Sleep, substance use, suicidal thinking, and unsafe housing first. Crisis Line and VA emergency / same-day mental health exist for this.
- Get a real assessment. PTSD, TBI, depression, moral injury, pain, and addiction often travel together. A VA or community clinician who understands military culture is worth the wait.
- Give first-line care an honest trial unless you have already done so. The 2023 VA/DoD PTSD guideline gives a strong for to trauma-focused psychotherapies: CPT, PE, and EMDR. Medications with the strongest support are sertraline, paroxetine, and venlafaxine. Benzodiazepines are recommended against for PTSD.
- Add what helps you stay in the fight — yoga, acupuncture, a service dog, a weekly equine session, a peer group — as adjuncts, not as a reason to abandon a therapy that is working slowly.
- If first-line care has failed or you cannot tolerate it, look at second-line and investigational options with eyes open: ketamine clinics, clinical trials (MDMA, psilocybin, ibogaine), HBOT, stellate ganglion block, intensive multi-week programs, retreats.
“Tried everything” sometimes means “tried two medications and one group.” Write down what you actually completed, for how long, and what happened. That list is gold when you talk to the next provider or a trial coordinator.
What the VA already covers or offers
Coverage varies by facility, but typically includes evidence-based PTSD psychotherapies, medications, residential PTSD and substance-use programs, and Whole Health complementary practices (acupuncture, meditation, yoga, Tai Chi/Qigong, massage, biofeedback, hypnosis, guided imagery). Esketamine (Spravato) may be available for treatment-resistant depression, not as a labeled PTSD treatment. Community Care (Mission Act) can send you outside VA when wait times or specialty needs justify it.
The VA has also expanded psychedelic research — MDMA, psilocybin and related compounds in controlled trials at multiple VA sites. That is not the same as VA clinics offering those treatments as standard care.
Culture notes that matter in treatment
- Combat memories are often chaotic, not cinematic. Good trauma therapy accounts for that.
- Moral injury (the sense of having violated your own code, or been betrayed) is not identical to fear-based PTSD. Some programs now treat it directly.
- Partners and caregivers carry secondary trauma. Programs that include them tend to hold gains better in some equine and intensive models.
- Women veterans and MST survivors often need female-only or MST-competent tracks. Rally Point: Valkyrie is one example of a dedicated women’s program.
How to use this repository
Open Types of care. Read the brief that matches what you are considering. Check the evidence tag and the legal/access tag. Then use Resources for official directories — ClinicalTrials.gov, VA PTSD site, veteran psychedelic trial lists, and crisis contacts.
If a program promises a guaranteed cure, requires you to stop all other care, or asks you to travel to an unregulated setting without medical screening, treat that as a warning flare.
