OCALA, FL (352today.com) – The Coalition for Awareness, Development, Resources and Education, CADRE, held a PTSD Summit titled “A Call to Action” at Ocala’s Elliott Center on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025.

The summit featured a series of speakers, who offered empathy, insight and resources to veterans who are experiencing the challenges associated with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, mental health and physical health issues.

Julian Sinisterra, a U.S. Navy veteran who serves as a director for CadreVets, VetNet Ocala and as an advisor to Veterans Helping Veterans USA’s board of directors introduced the audience to CADRE. CADRE is a coalition with the goal of bringing together all of the organizations in the area that have been working tirelessly for the veteran community, providing a support system, so they don’t have to go through their journey alone, he said.  The collective effort has been guided by the definition of what CADRE is, a small group of people, specially trained for a particular purposes or profession.

However, CADRE is taking the concept into a larger space. The coalition is action focused regarding veterans who may be facing serious challenges and think they’re alone. The coalition is made up of organizations that help veterans, first responders, families and caretakers who are contending with issues such as mental health, with doesn’t just affect the person who’s going through it, but also impacts friends, families and everyone around them.

CADRE is the middleman whose intention is to bring in all of the resources, recognizing there’s an opportunity within the community for the organizations to come together, and not just rely on the Veterans Administration to take care of veterans, but to take care of themselves, said Sinisterra.

Many of the organizations who are part of the coalition have programs that have successfully helped veterans.

“Our goal is to work with everybody,” Sinisterra. “This isn’t silos. We will work together, and we will get along. It’s about forming relationships. Let’s not think about the dark place of PTSD but the light at the end of the tunnel, which is there for us, but a lot of us can’t even see it.”

Programs with positive impacts

The summit provided an opportunity to share that message with others who are in need of help.

An emphasis on positive outcomes, health and well-being resonated throughout the summit, with each speaker sharing insight on how their resources and organizations may be able to help and improve one’s quality of life. Patricia Tomlinson, Arts in Health Ocala Metro executive director, shared information regarding PTSD and how the arts can help. The Journal of Military and Veterans Health states one of the most positive activities is drawing. It’s often used in therapy: If someone has trouble articulating their thoughts, they can express what they’re feeling through their drawings.

“According to the World Health Organization, health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being,” said Tomlinson, who emphasized that those in the organization aren’t art therapists, but predominantly artists who have received supplemental training. “What we seek to do in the arts and health discipline, we utilize the power of the arts to enhance well-being in diverse institutional and community settings. By institutional, we mean clinical, we also play bedside at both hospitals, we have musicians, painters, dancers or movement specialists, and we’ve also been doing literary art, poetry and spoken word. When I say arts with an ‘S’ I’m talking about all of the arts. We tap into our powerful human connection to make experiences better.”

Team building

Service Dogs for Patriots‘ Michelle Dunlap was also one of the featured speakers at the PTSD Summit. They’re a 501(c)(3) based out of Gainesville, serving 16 counties in Florida.

“Our veterans bring the dogs that they already own to us, and we train that person and their dog together as a team,” said Dunlap. “That means that individual will be training the dog. That means their healing starts the moment they start our program.”

Therapy options

Dr. Eric Milbrandt, Founder and Medical Director of Oasis Wellness and Recovery discussed emerging therapies for PTSD: ketamine, MDMA, and psychedelics in veteran care.

PTSD causes major problems for families, in occupations and personal lives. PTSD is learned fear. How does one recover from PTSD? One learns safety, said Milbrandt. It’s about changing our brains, he said.

“What happens in your brain, basically you get disrupted circuits, part of your brain called the prefrontal cortex, the front of your brain that’s responsible for modulating emotions, executive functions, that sort of thing, it kind of gets messed up with PTSD, and it doesn’t do what it needs to do,” said Milbrandt. “It’s charged with controlling the center part of your brain …which deals with fear, arousal, reproduction and those sorts of things. Psychedelics such as ketamine, MDMA and classic psychedelics reconnect some of these neural pathways and help foster emotional reintegration.”

You’re not alone 

Jason White, the Warrior Wheels Foundation executive director who spent 10 years in the United States Marine Corps, shared with the audience at the summit about peer support. He had experienced trauma while going through the foster care system prior to enlisting in the military.

“What it comes down to realistically, I see a lot of services in this room, Eric (Milbrandt) has been my therapist, I’ve gone to Vets Helping Vets, that was my first home here in Marion County, when I was falling on my face, going through a divorce, and I met Chad (Walker) and Julian (Sinisterra) and those were the individuals who helped me,” said White. “Although I have a background of being involved in the services, I was at a point in my life where I was led to a place called Camp Hope. It’s a place just for combat veterans and run by combat veterans. I learned something that I never knew before. What I learned in Camp Hope, was one thing we didn’t focus on was just the trauma. The biggest thing we focused on was the concept of why it was even built in the first place, for us it was for veterans, by the veterans, run by the veterans.”

At Camp Hope, White met fellow combat veterans that had also experienced childhood trauma, and they would get into peer groups, and have deep intense conversations, providing one another with support.

“We had a peer support group that we called Warrior Group that was the biggest success in my mental health change that I could have ever imagined,” said White.