Combat stress defused at front

Combat stress defused at front
Two Langley Air Force Base officers brought "control" tactics to the battlefields of Iraq last year.
By STEPHANIE HEINATZ | 247-7821
February 3, 2008

LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE - There's one Army medic whom Air Force Maj. Melissa O'Neill can't forget.

During the early years of the war in Iraq, the National Guard soldier watched as a homemade bomb exploded, hitting a military truck carrying one of his childhood friends. The medic was the first to try to save his friend from fatal wounds.

When he returned from that first deployment to Iraq, the medic kept secret the pain of not being able to revive his buddy and the struggles of living with survivor's guilt. He used alcohol to help him keep the secret.


Then, last year, he was sent back to Iraq.

"He came to me knowing he had a problem," said O'Neill, commander of the behavioral health unit at Langley Air Force Base. "He came to me wanting to use his time in Iraq to quit drinking."

O'Neill and Air Force Capt. Travis Lunasco, a Langley psychologist, spent about five months last year in Iraq as members of a combat-stress control team.

The teams are the military's way of taking the fight against combat stress — and the threat of that stress escalating into post-traumatic stress disorder when troops return home — to the front lines.

The counselors, psychologists and social workers who make up the teams run mental health clinics, advise commanders on how to help troops balance the stresses of home and the battlefield, and respond when troops survive traumatic events.
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