Stand For The Troops (SFTT) board president MAJGEN John Batiste US Army retired, and Greenwich resident Eilhys England Hackworth, SFTT board chair and co-founder with her late husband Col. David Hackworth, welcomed a capacity crowd at the Gotham Comedy Club in New York City on June 26. On the eve of National PTSD Awareness Day (June 27), veterans and returning frontline servicemen and women, friends, fans, and SFTT supporters
For over ten years SFTT, the Greenwich, CT-based nonprofit educational foundation, has been dedicated to safeguarding the physical, mental and emotional
well-being of America’s serving and returning frontline troops. Reminding the audience that a nation is measured by how it treats its own citizens and that we have an obligation to care for our returning heroes and citizen soldiers, co-hosts MAJGEN Batiste and Eilhys England Hackworth spoke of the need and responsibility for well positioned organizations like Stand For The Troops to
bridge the gap between the growing numbers of frontline troops suffering from combat-related PTSD and the capacity of traditional resources like the Veterans
Administration to meet the increasing demand.
With 1 in 5 Soldiers and Marines returning from Iraq and Afghanistan affected by combat-related PTSD and a staggering 18 Vets committing suicide every day, SFTT’s You Are Not Alone initiative is focused on helping the most
extreme cases get the timely treatment they need to transition back to their families, communities, and pre-PTSD lives and on working to remove the stigma
and establish pilot program protocols that can be replicated across the country. Information on SFTT, post-traumatic stress, and SFTT’s combat-related PTSD Initiative can be found at www.sftt.org.
