Bayou Veterans Advocacy’s Executive Director, Chad Carter, was featured on KTAL NBC’s Love Living Local program in June, 2025.
Bayou Veterans Advocacy’s Executive Director, Chad Carter, was the recipient of KTVE NBC’s Salute to Veterans for the month of May, 2025.
Published in The Ouachita Citizen, May 15, 2025
Our Veteran Mental Health Crisis: A Call for Action
When I left the Air Force in 2019, I thought the hardest battles for our military veterans were behind us.
I was wrong. Veteran suicide remains a national crisis. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, we lose between 17 and 20 veterans to suicide every day. This number is over 50 percent higher than that of non-veteran adults in the general U.S. population.
The Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans Act, signed in 2015, gave me hope. It was a landmark effort to address the alarming rate of veteran suicides. Central to the act was the establishment of a peer support program within the VA, designed to connect veterans with trained peers who could offer empathy, shared experience, and practical guidance. It promised to connect veterans with folks who’d walked the same path— fellow brothers and sisters in arms who also had the nightmares, the guilt, and the struggle to fit back into civilian life. Peer support is a lifeline. It’s a fellow vet who’s been to hell and back, who can look you in the eye and say, “I know, man, but you’re not alone.”
However, ten years later, we see the peer support program faltered due to inconsistent implementation, inadequate funding, and bureaucratic hurdles. The pilot program ended in 2019. Reviving this peer support program, with improvements in VA mental health treatment delivery, is necessary to honor the commitment to those who served.
Our veterans need tailored mental health interventions. Peer support leverages the power of shared experiences. Veterans often feel isolated, misunderstood by civilians, and skeptical of traditional therapy. Peers bridge this gap by offering relatable perspectives and fostering trust. Peer support programs are proven to reduce hospitalization rates and improve engagement in mental health care among veterans.
Beyond peer support, the VA must overhaul its mental health treatment delivery. Long wait times, limited access to specialized care, and inconsistent quality remain persistent barriers. Rural veterans, in particular, struggle with access due to isolation and a shortage of providers. Telehealth has helped, but it is not a cure-all—many veterans lack reliable internet or prefer in-person care. The VA must expand its mental health workforce and streamline appointment scheduling to reduce delays.
Integration is another critical area for improvement. Mental health care is often disjointed from primary care and other VA services, leading to fragmented treatment. The VA should adopt a wholehealth approach, embedding mental health professionals in all primary care settings and ensuring seamless coordination between services.
But VA clinics remain short staffed as to clinical social workers and other mental health providers. Reasons cited for this include pay disparities with the private sector, lengthy hiring processes, and competition among VA medical centers.
Reinvigorating the peer support program and improving mental health care delivery are complementary strategies that address different sides of the same crisis.
Peer support offers immediate, relatable intervention, while systemic improvements ensure longterm, comprehensive care.
Peers can pull a veteran back from the brink. A solid VA mental health system can keep veterans steady.
Congress, fund this fight. VA, hire more people, cut the wait times, and connect the dots between services. Veterans are not asking for a handout—just the support earned for serving our country. The time to act is now.
Chad Carter is a partner at the law firm of Parker Alexander in Monroe. He is a retired U.S. Air Force judge advocate, and is also executive director of Bayou Veterans Advocacy, a non-profit organization dedicated to raising awareness of and helping meet the essential needs of Louisiana military members, veterans and their families.
Published in the Ruston Daily Leader, March 7, 2025
End the Feres Doctrine: Let’s Free Our Heroes from a Legal Relic
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case of Air Force Staff Sergeant (SSgt) Ryan Carter. In 2018, SSgt Carter underwent a medical procedure in a military treatment facility to alleviate a spinal condition that occurred during his military training. During the procedure, he suffered an injury to his spinal cord that left him a quadriplegic. It was alleged that this occurred because the surgeon negligently placed an implant into the cervical spine.
When SSgt Carter and his wife sued for medical negligence under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) — the legislation that permits the US to be sued “in the same manner … as a private individual under like circumstances” — the matter was dismissed by the federal district court because he was a member of the military. The appellate court affirmed the district court’s decision.
The courts ruled against SSgt Carter and his family based on a 75-year-old exception to the FTCA—the Feres doctrine. Feres v. United States involved an Army lieutenant who died during a barracks fire. The Supreme Court ruled Lieutenant Feres’ family could not sue because his death resulted “incident to military service.”
Feres began a series of decades-long judicial betrayals of military member rights. But Congress never passed this FTCA exception. Instead, it was created by the courts acting as legislators themselves. Over the years different courts have espoused different rationales as to why Feres should be upheld (e.g., VA disability benefits are available to veterans). However, such veterans’ benefits do not provide for accountability, VA disability compensation is far less than that available to civilians in the courts, and there is no compensation to dependents and family members for the hardships imposed on them by the military member’s disability. As pointed out in Justice Thomas’ dissent in the Carter case, “[The Feres doctrine’s] policy-based justifications make little sense.” This judicially created exception to the federal liability framework of the FTCA is reviled by those on all sides of the ideological spectrum because it results in an injustice to our servicemembers. Over the years, Feres doctrine opposition included Supreme Court justices such as Thurgood Marshall, Antonin Scalia, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Clarence Thomas.
This is not a political issue. It’s a fairness issue.
The FTCA must be amended to eliminate Feres and allow for service members to sue for military negligence such as medical errors that are unrelated to combat. Congress should hold hearings where affected military members and their families are invited to share their stories to put this injustice into proper perspective. This would put to bed bureaucratic explanations as to why change is not needed. Without any reasonable justification, Feres has denied military members the same legal rights as civilians for many years. Congress must do what’s right for our servicemembers and end the Feres doctrine now. Our heroes deserve their day in court. The injustice suffered by SSgt Carter and his family should never happen again.
--Chad Carter, Esq., Monroe, La.
