by Dennis Dalman
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs recently announced a “Vet Center Outstation” will open in early 2024 in St. Cloud at 330 Hwy. 10.
The St. Cloud facility is one of eight new ones set to open soon in the nation.
Vet Center Outstations are typically opened in leased spaces where at least one full-time counselor can provide services at no cost to the veteran or service member. These convenient locations are equipped with rooms for individual and group counseling, a reception area, facilities and a staff break room. The centers offer individual, group, couples and family counseling, as well as referral services to other Veterans Administration and/or other community resources.
Many of the Vet Centers’ counselors and outreach staff are themselves veterans. Thus, they are experienced and prepared to discuss the tragedies of war such as loss, grief and transition to civilian life. Vet Center teams work to reduce barriers to care and to improve access to care.
Services include counseling for depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and the psychological effects of military sexual trauma. Vet Centers also provide referrals to connect veterans with their VA health care or benefits. This year, 2023, more than 115,000 veterans, service members and their families received counseling at the Veterans Administration’s 300-plus vet centers nationwide.
The U.S. Veterans Administration Secretary Denis McDonough, who is a graduate of St. John’s University, praised the centers.
“In 300 communities across the country, Vet Centers provide veterans, service members and their families with quick and easy access to the mental health care they need,” McDonough said. “We’re expanding this program to make sure these heroes get the support they so rightly deserve – no matter where they live.”
Sartell resident and veteran Phil Ringstrom can be proud of the news about the St. Cloud Vet Center because he has actively advocated for them for years. In fact, he and McDonough met at St. Cloud’s VA Medical Center on May 20, 2021 to have an extended conversation of the need for such a center in central Minnesota, possibly located in St. Cloud. For Ringstrom, it’s a dream come true.
Vet Centers have long been a cause dear to Ringstrom’s heart. He still works as a volunteer veterans’ advocate and was employed for 20 years as a nurse and a peer counselor at several VA medical centers, including the ones in St. Cloud and Duluth. Ringstrom was a U.S. Naval Reserve Nurse Corps officer and retired with the rank of commander. His brother and only sibling, Bob Ringstrom, is a Vietnam veteran who served for years as Sartell’s police chief.
In an interview with the Newsleaders, Ringstrom explained why veteran centers are so important.
They are not for medical issues,” he said. “VA hospitals take care of them. The centers are for peer counseling, assistance for jobs and education, and for family counseling.”
Veterans can literally just walk in the door at a center. There is, at most, just a quick questionnaire to fill out and no waits. Services are free. One reason the centers were started years ago is because of the long waiting periods (in some cases, months) that some veterans had to endure at some very busy VA medical centers.
Ringstrom, while working at the VA in Duluth, saw the need for such centers long before they were even initiated. Time and again, Ringstrom met veterans who did not benefit from counseling by non-veterans or by veterans from other wars. That, Ringstrom said, is because every war has been so different, generation to generation, including the reasons for fighting them. World War II, for example, was fought to save civilization from the onslaught of fascist tyrannies; Korea was fought to keep the North Koreans/Chinese from invading South Korea; the rationale for fighting in Vietnam was to keep South Asia from collapsing under Communism (the so-called falling-dominoes theory); the wars in the Mid-East were a reaction to the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the United States.
Thus, veterans from a particular war benefit most by counseling with a veteran counselor who served during that same time, that same war. A validation process, with lots of empathy, goes on during peer counseling as each knows where the other is “coming from.”
Ringstrom is often troubled by the thought of a loved one or relative telling a depressed, suicidal or homeless veteran something like, “You’re all messed up. You’ve gotta get to the VA.”
It’s so much better, Ringstrom said, if those veterans could have immediate access to Vet Centers whose welcoming motto is “Walk on in!”
There are now only three such centers in Minnesota – Anoka, Duluth, St. Paul. In the United States, there are about 300 of them.
Long-time veterans advocate Phil Ringstrom of Sartell.
