Emotional Army veteran expresses frustrations with VA in viral TikTok video: 'I just want some f***ing continuity of care with mental health'



An emotional Army veteran expressed his deep-rooted frustrations with attempting to get consistent mental health from the Department of Veterans Affairs in a TikTok video that went viral.

Retired Army Sgt. Joe Cantasano shared a video on May 17 detailing how the VA failed to provide him with consistent mental health care. Cantasano has had to endure a constant change of mental health providers – which has left him exasperated.

"Seven times over the course of the last f***ing six years dude, the VA has continued to let me down," a tearful Cantasano said on video. "I just want some f***ing continuity of care with mental health providers. What the f***?"

Cantasano said that his doctors "kept quitting" or the health network switched which health care professionals were available.

"And then the one doctor that I really liked, who talked me off of f***ing ledge the last time was refused," he said, noting that the doctor went out of his network.

The Army veteran said he spent the last two years "dealing with my own demons myself and trying to hold it f***ing together." Cantasano said he's been off "all my medications for f***ing two years."

"I've been doing it all on my own, just white-knuckling it," he said.

Cantasano lamented about seeing a new doctor, "Then I gotta open f***ing Pandora's box again because they're gonna want to know everything, and I'm gonna have to live through that for a month."

Cantasano added, "It's not a lot to ask, I just want to be able to talk to the same person, and not have to retell these f***ing stories that torment me."

"I just want some continuity of f***ing care," he said at the end of the video that quickly went viral online.

@averagefloridaman

Reposting the original video.. i have posted and update, please be sure to watch that, i knew that by sharing my all to common story and allowing myself to be vulnerable in front of the world that i might light a fire of change. Now we have national attention on this epidemic. 🙌🏼 #Vet #veteran #mentalhealth #veteransoftiktok #veteransaffairs #vets

Fox News host Lawrence Jones saw the viral video, and invited Cantasano to talk about how the VA failed him.

Cantasano said he was forced to go through "five or six providers over the course of 15 months for a multitude of different reasons."

The Army veteran said it can take up to a month to find a local health care provider in his community.

Cantasano noted that there was "a lot of red tape at the VA" as well as in Congress that impedes providing veterans with quality care.

He hopes that his viral video will "get the ball rolling in the right direction."

He continued, "I just feel like, I know that my instance and my experience is not special, it's it happens hundreds of times a day that that, you know, veterans are told that they can't see their primary mental health care provider any longer or are no longer authorized to go back to that individual."

Lawrence said Cantasano's emotional video "got his attention."

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Here's what one veteran has to say about the VA www.youtube.com

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Missing vet's body found 'significantly decayed' in VA stairwell a month after he disappeared



The decaying body of a missing Army veteran went undiscovered at a Veteran Affairs facility for more than a month after staff failed to do so much as check a stairwell near his room.

In a 45-page report issued Thursday, the Department of Veteran Affairs Office of the Inspector General said 62-year-old Timothy White was reported missing by Bedford Veterans Quarters staff on May 13. Nearly a month later, on June 12, White's "significantly decayed" body was found in a stairwell — just 60 feet from where he was staying.

The Boston Globe reported that "he had been dead for so long that the medical examiner couldn't determine how he died."

The inspector general report noted that White "was wearing the same clothes that he had been reported wearing on May 8, 2020, the last time he was seen prior to his disappearance: a Boston Red Sox jersey, jeans, and a baseball cap." It was another resident at the facility who finally discovered his body.

White, who had recently struggled with homelessness, had been living at the VA-owned, privately operated facility since January 2020. He had no car and no cell phone, and he wasn't known to leave the facility without explanation.

In its report, officials blamed the failure to locate White's body sooner on "poor decision-making, misinformation, and lack of oversight" by the VA.

"Mr. White's disappearance did not receive the attention it deserved from VA, an agency that is required by federal law to provide for the protection of all persons on its property," wrote assistant inspector general Katherine Smith.

"The events surrounding Mr. White's disappearance revealed several deficiencies in VHA and VA policies regarding missing persons on VA properties, local policing decisions, and oversight of enhanced-use leases," Smith added. "The medical center, including its VA police, did not initiate a response to Mr. White's disappearance under VHA's missing patients policy because he was considered a resident and not a patient."

According to the Boston Globe, much of the responsibility lies at the feet of former VA police chief Shawn Kelley, who has since resigned from his post, citing health issues.

Investigators reportedly concluded that Kelley "failed to order a significant search," choosing only to post a photo of White on a department bulletin board and notify officers of his disappearance in an email.

"He also waited nearly two weeks to respond to a request from the Bedford town police to search for White with police dogs," the Globe reported, adding, "That search was never conducted."

In a statement to the news outlet, VA spokeswoman Maureen Heard said, "We are very saddened over the loss of Mr. Timothy White and extend our deepest condolences to his family."

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