June is PTSD Awareness Month, and one of the most important things to understand about posttraumatic stress is that it often doesn't look the way people expect. In military service members, veterans, first responders, emergency medical personnel, and others who work in high-pressure environments, PTSD frequently doesn't look like falling apart. It can look like competence.
6.7 million
The number of children in the United States in 2024 who "lived in a household with at least 1 loaded and unlocked gun," according to a study published in JAMA Network Open -- Firearm Storage in Households With Children.
There are military families living quietly among us who carry a weight that most of us can scarcely imagine. They are the spouses whose hearts shattered at the loss of their partner and experienced another shattering as they found words to tell their children that their parent would never come home. They are the children who learned, at ages far too young, to live without their mom or dad. Surviving military families — those who have lost a service member parent or spouse — benefit greatly from a mental health community that understands the unique dimensions of their loss and is equipped to meet their needs.
27 million
The number of people who are "impacted by bereavement" resulting from "approximately 3.1 million deaths in the United States every year," according to a recent paper from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) -- A Systems-Based Approach to Supporting Individuals Who Have Experienced Grief and Loss.
On 3-4 June 2026, the Sleep and Fatigue Management in the DoW Convening Event successfully brought together 138 military stakeholders, researchers, and policymakers in a hybrid format at the HJF Headquarters in Bethesda, MD. In direct response to evolving operational requirements and GAO guidance, the summit aimed to advance cross-agency collaboration, strategically track sleep health research, and address systemic barriers to sleep and fatigue management from both an operational and leadership perspective.