BATON ROUGE—For many service members, Veterans Day can evoke many emotions, both good and bad.

It’s a day to honor their service, sacrifice and contributions to this country, but for some, it can be bittersweet.

"It becomes very, very personal for a lot of people, especially when they've lost friends and loved ones," Dr. Charles Weber said.

Dr. Charles Weber is a retired army lieutenant colonel, psychiatrist and founder of Family Care Center — which provides mental health support to veterans and their families — he says those who have been deployed to combat zones can have an especially hard time being forced to face certain feelings.

"I think a lot of it is a struggle for each one of the individual veterans that kind of get to marinate in some of their past and some of their past loss,” Dr. Weber said.

Weber says it's okay to thank a veteran you don't know well but he says if a loved one has served to get personal with your gratitude, give them your time, guide them to helpful resources and help them stay connected to others.

"If you know of a vet and they're isolating and they're staying away or they're, they're kind of holding up is to really do more than thank you for your services to kind of reach out, checking up on them, inviting him to that barbecue, inviting him to that time to, to kind of reconnect with that, which we've sacrificed for," he said.