The Orlando VA Medical Center is working toward its goal of providing better support to transgender veterans. On July 7, it hosted an hour long seminar titled “Deep Inside My Brain”A Transgender Woman's Journey” by Rachel Hunt of Orlando. The presentation was aimed at helping medical and mental healthcare professionals provide healthcare to transgendered veterans.
Keri Griffin-Edenfield, a therapist at the Orlando VA, said about 30 people attended the event and it's likely Hunt will appear again for a Q & A session or more educational presentations. Griffin-Edenfield has run an LGBT veterans support group for two years and one regular attendee is transgender. She's works to get the VA to provide more support for Orlando's LGBT veterans.
Griffin-Edenfield said there have been some positive moves on the transgender front at the VA national level and “locally, it trickles down to us. There's still some resistance but we're getting there.”
She said more of the VA's nurses are being trained on hormone therapies and she'd like to see more staff trained on the therapies that transgender veterans need pre- and post-op.
“I myself am in the process of getting trained on [transgender] specific therapy needs,” Griffin-Edenfield said.
A 2008 study by the University of California identified that more than 300,000 U.S. Military Veterans identify as transgendered. Presently, active duty military men and women who identify as transgendered are discharged for mental illness.
