The Veterans Left Behind

Eligibility for Department of Veterans Affairs Benefits and Other Than Honorable Discharges

Angela K. Clague, Heather M. Salazar, Stephanie Brooks Holliday, Mary Lowe Mayhugh, Jim Craig, Rajeev Ramchand

Expert InsightsPublished Sep 17, 2024

Veterans who receive Other Than Honorable (OTH) characterizations of service upon discharge often have limited to no access to U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) benefits. This paper explains the connections between OTH discharges and veterans' benefits eligibility and provides suggestions for how VA and Congress can enhance care for this vulnerable group.

Research has found that a significantly greater proportion of veterans who were discharged with OTH screened positive for the following conditions than veterans who discharged honorably: generalized anxiety, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, alcohol misuse, and cannabis misuse. The risks of homelessness and suicide are more than double higher for veterans who received OTH discharges than for those who were discharged honorably.

Enhanced guidance in the form of a structured checklist to determine discharge characterization could save time and help standardize the assignment of discharges across the military services. The character of discharge assignment process may also be improved with a counselor or an independent medical evaluation board review that examines the paperwork for service members issued OTH discharges to ensure that the information is accurate, especially concerning mental health conditions. Another approach to support veterans with OTH discharges is enhancing data coordination between VA and DoD and providing the Veterans Benefits Administration with a simple visualization of benefits, discharge status, and any other relevant criteria to provide information benefit eligibility according to character-of-discharge.

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Clague, Angela K., Heather M. Salazar, Stephanie Brooks Holliday, Mary Lowe Mayhugh, Jim Craig, and Rajeev Ramchand, The Veterans Left Behind: Eligibility for Department of Veterans Affairs Benefits and Other Than Honorable Discharges, RAND Corporation, PE-A1363-13, September 2024. As of October 15, 2024: https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PEA1363-13.html
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Clague, Angela K., Heather M. Salazar, Stephanie Brooks Holliday, Mary Lowe Mayhugh, Jim Craig, and Rajeev Ramchand, The Veterans Left Behind: Eligibility for Department of Veterans Affairs Benefits and Other Than Honorable Discharges. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2024. https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PEA1363-13.html.
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Funding for this publication was made possible by a generous gift from Daniel J. Epstein through the Epstein Family Foundation. The research was conducted by the RAND Epstein Family Veterans Policy Research Institute within RAND Education and Labor.

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