Title : Dishonored valor: Military sexual trauma, addiction, and the urgent need for a national women veterans movement
Abstract:
Military sexual trauma (MST) is a public health issue with consequences that can extend far beyond the original assault or harassment. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs reports that about one in three women veterans screened in VA health care disclose MST. Research also links a positive MST screen to a higher likelihood of alcohol- and drug-use disorders, while cumulative military stressors heighten the risk of co-occurring posttraumatic stress and substance-use symptoms. Yet many women remain disconnected from veteran-centered care; VA reports that only 44 percent of women veterans are enrolled in its health care system. These conditions create an urgent need for responses that integrate clinical treatment with prevention, survivor protection, peer support, and institutional accountability.
This conceptual and practice-informed presentation examines addiction and harmful substance use as potential trauma adaptations within the contexts of MST, chronic threat, grief, moral injury, dissociation, and institutional betrayal. It considers how fear of retaliation, disrupted trust, racial and gender inequities, fragmented systems, and the requirement to continue living or working near an alleged perpetrator may impede disclosure and delay care. A psychodynamic and trauma-informed framework is used to understand substance use without reducing the survivor to a diagnosis or isolating symptoms from the military and institutional conditions in which they developed.
The presentation then introduces the Million Women Veterans March on Washington, planned for October 2027, as a national public health and policy movement. Conceived by National Women Veterans United, the International Association of Military Women of Color, and Victory Place, NFP, the movement unites veterans, families, caregivers, clinicians, researchers, civil rights and faith organizations, and community leaders. Its eleven policy priorities address equitable health care; MST prevention, justice, and accountability; mental health and suicide prevention; housing; economic and benefits equity; racial and gender equity; legal protections; institutional transparency; military-to-civilian transition; family and caregiver needs; and emerging behavioral risks.
Attendees will receive a practical framework for integrating PTSD and substance-use treatment with survivor-centered advocacy, community partnerships, and measurable policy reform. The central proposition is that recovery requires accessible, coordinated clinical care, while prevention requires institutions to reduce the conditions that enable trauma, retaliation, and avoidable harm.
