Seminar To Focus On Needs Of Troops Returning From Combat

Seminar To Focus On Needs Of Troops Returning From Combat
By ANN MARIE SOMMA Courant Staff Writer
May 5, 2008

ROCKY HILL — - War can challenge the human spirit. So how can churches in the state reach out to returning troops from Iraq and Afghanistan?

Responding to that challenge is the focus of a one-day workshop scheduled for Thursday at the Rocky Hill Veterans Home titled "Returning from War — A Spiritual Response," and co-sponsored by the state Department of Veterans Affairs and the Christian Conference of Connecticut.

From 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. religious leaders and behavioral health counselors and therapists will address issues facing returning veterans and their families, including suicide prevention, managing transitions, post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injuries, and how to minister to returning soldiers and their families.

"We want to better understand what the soldiers have been through so that we might be able to minister to them and their families," said the Rev. Judy G. Allbee, executive minister of the American Baptist Churches of Connecticut, and one of the workshop's speakers. "If you don't suffer from PTSD, if you have never been in a war zone, you don't really understand what happens to a person. This isn't something that is taught in seminary."
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If you ask a minister or pastor about PTSD, their eyes glaze over as if you are speaking in a bunch of words they never heard before. Yet if you ask a chaplain, they know exactly what you're talking about. They have been trained to know because they cared to know. Not faulting the clergy on this because it's very hard to expect people who never really had to live with any of this to have a clue what it's about.

Chaplains are in all fields and they are trained to deal with and minister to trauma survivors. It doesn't matter if it's law enforcement or emergency responders or the victims and it doesn't matter if it's a combat veteran dealing with war. While PTSD is complicated, it is not that hard to understand if they can put themselves in the place of someone else. They can't do it if they were never exposed to it. The hopeful thing here is that they are willing, finally, to learn!