• Will slaying of ex-SEAL Chris Kyle mar veteran job market?

    By Bill Briggs, NBC News contributor

    The weekend homicides of ex-Navy SEAL and “American Sniper” author Chris Kyle and a friend in Texas have stoked fresh concerns among mental-health experts and veteran advocates that the crime’s PTSD theme will further stigmatize and dampen an already-soggy job market for men and women home from war.


    “What worries me about this story is it will frighten potential employers away from hiring veterans who have been in Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Dr. Harry Croft, a San Antonio-based psychiatrist who has talked with more than 7,000 veterans diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.

    “The myth is all of them have PTSD  — not true, only 20 percent.  Another myth is that all of them who have a severe case of it — not true; it goes from very mild to severe. The third myth is that everybody with PTSD is aggressive, unreliable, or trouble in the workplace, and none of that is (true) either. It scares me,” Croft said.

    The unemployment rate for post-9/11 veterans was 11.7 percent in January compared to 9.1 percent in January 2012, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Younger female veterans grappled with a 17.1 percent unemployment rate last month — virtually unchanged from one year ago — while the unemployment rate for younger male veterans was 10.5 percent in January, which marked an increase from 7.7 percent during the same month in 2012.

    “One of the things I talk about in the presentations I give to employers is how the stigma of the crazed vet like Sgt. (Robert) Bales, or, now, this young man in Texas, is very rare and it’s atypical. Now, that doesn’t mean that a vet with PTSD doesn’t have anger and agitation issues. But generally, it’s worse at home than it is at work,” said Croft, who co-authored “I Always Sit with My Back to the Wall: Managing Traumatic Stress and Combat PTSD.”

    Chris Kyle, a sniper in Iraq, was so feared that he was dubbed "The Devil of Ramadi" and had an $80,000 bounty on his head. Tragically, it wasn't enemy fire that killed him, but a fellow soldier asking for help with PTSD. NBC's Jim Miklaszewski reports.

    Eddie Ray Routh, 25, a Marine Corps corporal from 2006 to 2010 who deployed to Iraq in 2007, was arraigned Sunday on two counts of capital murder in the deaths of Kyle, 38, and Chad Littlefield, 35, at a shooting range in North Texas. Both men were killed with a semi-automatic handgun.

    According to Erath County Sheriff Tommy Bryant, Routh "may have been suffering from some type of mental illness from being in the military himself." Bryant added that Routh's mother possibly contacted Kyle to try to help her son. The sheriff also learned, he said, that the three men might have been at the range “for some type of therapy that Mr. Kyle assists people with.”

    Some veterans who toil in the job-mentoring trenches to try to deflate those unemployment stats share Croft’s concern that Texas shootings may bolster an existing PTSD stigma and inject more doubt into the minds of some hiring managers.

    “Unfortunately, I think that’s a possibility,” said John E. Pickens, executive director of VeteransPlus and the Yellow Ribbon Registry Network. VeteransPlus has offered financial counseling to more than 150,000 current and former service members. The nonprofit also has partnered with The WorkPlace, Citi and Wal-Mart to help long-term, unemployed veterans improve their job candidacies and find work.

    “But I’m not sure how to address that (stigma) because for those people who read something like this and take away a negative impression, it’s very difficult — other than having a one-on-one, good experience with a veteran — to be able to overcome that,” said Pickens, a former Army combat medic.

    Iraq veteran Ed Richardson, who’s now attending college but who’s been scouting for a job since December 2011, has watched employers offer subtle signals about his war service during job interviews.

    “I’ve had people’s body language completely change with me — their eyes get large and they want to lean back in their chair” when the topic arises with hiring managers, said Richardson, 49, who is in the Army Reserves and who lives in Kentucky. “Some ask me: ‘Have you had any issues? Because some veterans have had the problems.’

    "Being a veteran and having that going against me (in job hunting), you have to have something to counter it and I believe having an associate degree can help, or preferably a bachelor’s degree,” Richardson said. He ideally wants to work in federal law enforcement. “But I’m very positive about my outlook.” 

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  • From combat to corporate -- and the new stigma blocking some veterans

    Courtesy of Chris Perkins

    Chris Perkins is a former U.S. Marine who served in Iraq until 2006. His battalion suffered heavy casualties.

    By Bill Briggs, NBC News contributor

    At job fairs this summer from Denver to Colorado Springs, retired Army sergeant Thomas Maretich always bumps into the usual suspects and an all-too-familiar gaze of frustration — as if he’s staring into a mirror.


    “I keep seeing the same people — mostly veterans — and I’m talking about captains, people with college degrees. They’ve been all over the world, have all kinds of experience. But it’s just the same guys over and over,” said Maretich, who in June earned a medical retirement from the Army.

    “There are just a handful of jobs and thousands of veterans lined up for them. How are you supposed to get a job?” asked Maretich, a Colorado Springs resident with more than 20 years of Army experience. “Our veteran numbers are growing and jobs aren’t growing fast enough. It’s a real problem.”

    Yet amid the listless hiring rates of a slack economy, men and women with combat experience are being purposely ignored by some employers who fear they may have the symptoms of  post-traumatic stress disorder, thus making them — in their view — risky candidates, said John E. Pickens III, executive director of VeteransPlus.

    “While it’s good that employers and general public understand (PTSD) issues, there may be some employers who know just enough to be reluctant, and who say: I want to hire this guy but I don’t want this guy having his war experiences affect his work,” Pickens said. His nonprofit has offered financial counseling to more than 150,000 current and former service members. 

    “Some of the folks we talk to say they feel a little bit conspicuous. Employers are even reluctant to talk to them about their military experiences,” added Pickens, a former combat medic. “While eventually transitioning (into corporate jobs), their co-workers become aware that this is a veteran, and the veteran feels scrutinized to the point where it's like: ‘Are you OK?’ "

    Through his consultations with veterans over myriad money issues, Pickens said he has learned that some have opted not to seek treatment for PTSD symptoms at Veterans Affairs hospitals exactly because “they don’t want to be labeled or stigmatized” in their civilian jobs — or while trying to land one.

    Related: Opera about Iraq war reaches out to veterans
    Related: Vets battle PTSD stigma -- even if they don't have it

    “It’s like nobody wants to hire anybody with PTSD,” Maretich said. “It’s ridiculous. The whole thing got a bad name.”

    On his final mission in Iraq on Aug. 27, 2009 — during his fourth tour in a war zone — sergeant first class Maretich was stationed as the gunner atop an Army vehicle. A car approached, driven by “a kid,” he recalled. After Maretich determined the vehicle was an imminent threat, he shot and killed the driver, he said. The car, loaded with an estimated 500 pounds of explosives, nonetheless detonated, causing Maretich to suffer a traumatic brain injury, sleep problems, chronic back pain and a knee that required replacement.

    Related: 'Got Your 6' campaign helps vets return to civilian life

    He also was diagnosed with PTSD — now, be believes, an unmentioned roadblock to his hopes for a corporate job due to its attached stigma.

    The irony, he added, is that his duties in Iraq — including in operational intelligence and serving as a combat advisor to Iraqi soldiers — make him an ideal contender for a stateside job.

    “I don’t think there is better job training anywhere,” he said. “I’m pretty sure that if I can get an Iraqi soldier to do what we’re training him to do — in a different language and a different culture — I can handle any kind of training job in America where the people speak the same language.”

    Some companies, including New York-based financial giant Citi, have recognized that service members who have weathered combat carry unique talents into the boardroom. Last year, Citi hired 700 veterans and this year the company plans to hire at least 1,000 more, said Citi spokesman David Roskin.

    Courtesy of Chris Perkins

    Former U.S. Marine Chris Perkins has successfully moved from the lethal streets of Iraq to the fierce ways of Wall Street.

    Former U.S. Marine Chris Perkins has maneuvered from lethal hot spots in Iraq to a high-pressure job on Wall Street. He exited the Marine Corps in 2006 and immediately recognized, he said, the same talents that fuel success in Manhattan’s hard-charging financial district are not dissimilar from the skills that helped Perkins thrive while serving in Ar Ramadi, the capital of the Al Anbar Province.

    Related: Mortgage woes afflict high rate of active troops, veterans

    “My job over there was to make very timely and accurate, quantitative decisions with the understanding of risk and risk managements,” said Perkins, now managing director and global head of OTC derivatives intermediation and clearing for Citi. He recalled one frightening moment — delivering bicycles to an Iraqi school then being pinned down by insurgent gunfire five minutes later and about one block away.

    Over time, 260 Marines were wounded within his battalion of 1,000 and 16 were killed in action.

    Courtesy of Citi

    Today, Perkins is an executive with Citi but also helping other veterans ease into the corporate workforce.

    “When I was able to navigate into the financial services sector, I asked: ‘Hey, you guys are traders, right? Isn’t that what you’re doing? Aren’t you making quantitative decisions all day long while understanding the risks you are taking?’

    "The successful traders said, ‘Yes, that’s exactly we’re doing.’ So I was able to transfer my skills into that job,” said Perkins, who later founded the Citi Military Veterans Network and played a leading role in working with fellow veterans within the financial services industry to co-found Veterans on Wall Street.

    Veterans who apply for corporate gigs should carry not a stigma, Perkins said, but a stamp of approval: they’re wired to work long hours with minimal sleep, start early, complete assigned tasks — all with a certain intensity and focus that only can be sharpened by battle experience.

    But maybe too many hiring managers and human resources honchos “have just seen too many ‘Rambo’ movies,” Maretich speculated. “Maybe they think we’re all going to come back and not be productive.

    “Believe me, man, if I could go out there and swing a hammer, I would. I can’t anymore. The one thing I can do is work in a corporate environment,” he added. “And the thing is, I’ve been really training to do that for years.

    “In the civilian world, it’s not life and death. You’re not working 12 hours a day 7 days a week. You’re not worried whether your next decision is going to get everybody killed when they go out there. The corporate world would actually be a lot easier.” 

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  • Veterans battle PTSD stigma -- even if they don't have it

    By Stacy Lu

    Fresh from a tour of duty in Iraq where he earned a Bronze Star, Ryan Gallucci didn’t expect a simple job interview to be such a memorably unpleasant experience.

    “I was interviewing with a P.R. agency when my military service came up. Some of the questions got a little prying.  ‘Oh, so what did you do over there? And what was that like?’ ” 

    Though he was called back for subsequent interviews, Gallucci said the experience left a “sour taste in my mouth.” Now the deputy legislative director for the Veterans of Foreign Wars organization, Gallucci suspects the interviewer for that other job may have been more curious about his mental health than his experiences in Iraq.

    Research shows he may be right: Some employers are wary of hiring veterans because of potential mental health issues.

    “There’s a whole host of questions you can’t legally ask, but I must say that somehow in interviews it comes out,” says Jim Pabis, a Colonel in the New York Army National Guard and Iraq combat vet who runs an executive search firm in Saratoga Springs, NY.

    Nearly half of employers -- 46 percent -- said PTSD or other mental health issues were challenges in hiring employees with military experience, according to a 2010 Society of Human Resource Management survey. And a 2011 survey of 831 hiring managers by the Apollo Research Institute found that 39 percent were "less favorable" toward hiring military personnel when considering war-related psychological disorders.

    About 20 percent of Iraq or Afghanistan veterans will develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), an anxiety disorder brought on by living through extremely stressful or life-threatening events; the more tours of duty, the greater the risk of PTSD. It can be devastating if untreated and lead to depression, panic attacks and drug abuse, and can increase the risk of suicide. Veterans commit one in five of all suicides in the U.S.

    Yet recent high-profile news about veteran violence and its possible links to PTSD may speak louder than realities of the illness. It’s treatable, rarely leads to violent acts and is not uncommon -- six to eight percent of Americans will develop PTSD in their lifetime.

    “In the first place, most veterans do not develop PTSD. The minority that do have the same kinds of reactions of people exposed to a hurricane or a car accident,” says Josef Ruzek, Ph.D., director of the dissemination and training division at the National Center for PTSD. 

    The PTSD fear factor isn’t new. “We’ve seen the stigma of the crazy war veteran before.  It was especially harsh after Vietnam, when the nation didn't really have the kind of support for men and women who serve in the military that they have today,” says Gallucci.

    That support, which includes attempts by the Department of Veterans Affairs to educate the public about PTSD and to encourage affected vets to seek treatment, may have unintended consequences. More civilian employers know that servicemen and women are at greater risk for PTSD.

    “There’s been a major cultural shift in how soldiers speak up about the mental toll of war, but also a potential backlash against our attempt to de-stigmatize PTSD,” Gallucci says.

    Finding a civilian job can already by a hurdle, particularly for Iraq-war era vets. Unemployment rates have been consistently higher for this group than non-civilians of the same ages.  According to a recent report by the Department of Veterans Affairs, male veterans ages 18 to 24 who have served since September of 2001 have an unemployment rate of just over 29 percent, compared 17.6 percent of nonveterans of the same ages.  

    There’s no evidence that the higher unemployment rate for young vets is due to fears about mental health issues. In fact, research shows there is a positive bias toward hiring a veteran if she or he has a clearly transferable, comparable skill set to a non-veteran, says Meredith Kleykamp, Ph.D, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, who researches consequences of military service and is married to a veteran.

    There may also be a discrepancy in how veterans perceive they are being treated, Kleykamp says, versus how they actually are.

    “So few people are actually serving in these wars.  There may be employer ignorance. And vets may feel there is a lack of understanding from people and employers that they meet,” she says.

    Still, while experts welcome greater public awareness of the difficulties veterans may face, that growing understanding might work against them when it comes to presumptions of mental health.

    “Civilians may feel like, ‘How could he not be damaged by something like that?” Kleykamp says.

    For more on Hiring our Heroes, an initiative from NBC News and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that aims to get veterans back into the workforce, click here. Learn more about job fairs for veterans here. Below, watch NBC's Janet Shamlian discuss job fairs for spouses of veterans.

    NBC's Janet Shamlian discusses job fairs for spouses of veterans, and NBC's Kevin Tibbles talks with veteran Brad Watson about how military experience can be translated to workplace qualifications on a resume.