The War Within: Eyewitness News investigates PTSD, Part V

The War Within: Eyewitness News investigates PTSD, Part V
By By Kurt Rivera, Eyewitness News
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* Editor's Note: This is the final installment in an Eyewitness News special report on post-traumatic stress disorder. For months, Eyewitness News has been documenting personal accounts of the devastating disorder. Many military veterans have never spoken publicly about their agonizing problems.

By the time all troops in Iraq and Afghanistan finally come home, thousands will face a different battle: post-traumatic stress disorder. So how are veterans and their families getting help? And, is the Department of Veterans Affairs prepared for the expected onslaught of cases? Amber Allen is married to a Bakersfield Marine veteran diagnosed with PTSD."You want to throw in the towel all the time. You really do. Like I quit, I'm done," says Amber Allen.

"My marriage is starting, hopefully it doesn't, to go down the drain. I don't want it to," says Marine veteran Mike Allen.

Mike Allen and wife Amber are opening-up at a counseling session at Good Samaritan Hospital in southwest Bakersfield."It comes firmly out of his mouth. Nothing will make me happy," says Amber referring to husband Mike.

The Allens who have known each other since they were thirteen.

"I served eight and a half years in the Marine Corp and I was diagnosed with severe PTSD," say Mike Allen surrounded by his family in a cozy conference room.This is ground zero in their desperate attempt to save a close knit marriage deeply impacted by Mike's struggle from within.

"Takes a lot of courage to just be free enough to take the risk, just to talk," says Russ Sempell who leads the counseling session.

Russ Sempell and Patrice Maniaci are co-founders of the counseling session called "Frontline."

"It's a unique "National Alliance on Mental Illness" or "NAMI" support group geared towards counseling family and friends of veterans with PTSD."Have you accepted I've got a different deck of cards to play with this time?" says Sempell speaking directly to Amber Allen.Sempell is a clinical psychologist and licensed family & marriage therapist at Good Samaritan Hospital.

Maniaci is a recovering survivor of PTSD learning to understand a father who developed the disorder in World War Two and Korea."I saw that he wasn't that crappy old drunk that we all hated or that I did. He was a veteran suffering with the trauma he suffered while he was in the war," says Maniaci.

"We had a veteran last night that was excited about getting help for the first time in fifty years.

Our motto is we're trying to save lives and save families," says a beaming Sempell.
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