Starbucks is lending a helping hand to U.S. veterans.
CBS News reported that Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is donating $30 million to benefit the rehabilitation of U.S. war veterans. The donation will go toward research for traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which thousands of returning soldiers suffer from.
"[D]epending on who you're talking to, 20, 30, 40 percent of the two million people who have served are coming back with some kind of brain trauma or [PTSD]," Schultz told CBS News. "We're going to fund the opportunity for significant research and for medical practitioners and science to understand the disease and, ultimately, hopefully, come up with some, a level of remedy."
PTSD is an anxiety disorder caused by very stressful, frightening or distressing events, which can include but are not limited to violent assaults, natural disasters, sexual abuse or combat. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, PTSD affects between 11 and 20 percent of military members who are overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan.
About 50 percent of those with PTSD do not seek treatment. The disorder usually develops immediately after an event, but can take months to years before symptoms, including reliving the experience, insomnia and aggression, emerge. Schultz told CBS that veterans do not get the treatment or understanding that they deserve.
"The truth of the matter is, and I say this with respect, more often than not, the government does a very -- a much better job of sending people to war than they do bringing them home, " he stated. " These young men and women who are coming home from multiple deployments are not coming home to a parade. They're not coming home to a celebration. They're coming home to an American public that really doesn't understand, and never embraced, what these people have done."
The donation follows Shultz promise last year to hire at least 10,000 veterans and spouses of active military in five years. The company also announced that existing U.S. Starbucks cafes, on or near military bases, will share a portion of each sale with non-profit organizations that help veterans re-enter the workforce.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, last year the unemployment rate among post-9/11 veterans dropped to nine percent, down from 9.9 percent the year before. Between 2000 and 2014, the Congressional Research Service reported 152,985 cases or PTSD within the U.S. Army.
