Dr. Karen Seal taking PTSD in new direction

Karen Seal and her colleagues worked to get a new clinic in San Francisco for Iraq war vets. (Chronicle photo by Michael Macor)

Waiting room fills with young vets

Meredith May
Chronicle Staff Writer



Four years after the start of the war in Iraq, Dr. Karen Seal took a job at the San Francisco VA Medical Center to work in the liver clinic, treating patients with hepatitis C.

She noticed the veterans in the waiting room. Most of them were from the Vietnam era, in their 60s and older.

But over the months, the faces began to get younger. The waiting room was starting to fill with young men in their late teens and 20s, the first trickle of Bay Area soldiers emotionally and physically injured by the war.


Seal, a primary care physician, began working with them, taking their medical histories and directing them to the right care.

"At the time, I had never heard of PTSD," Seal said.

Now she knows how post-traumatic stress disorder contributes to the alcohol addiction and depression she sees in many of her patients.

She made referral after referral to the mental health wing of the VA hospital, but heard from colleagues that those initial patients never made it. It was too much of a stigma - especially in military culture - to walk across the campus to the mental health ward.

So Seal and colleagues got an idea. What if there were a special clinic just for Iraq war veterans that combined primary care and mental health checkups in a nonjudgmental setting?
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