For troubled service members, military therapists are at their sides

The problem is not just there are not enough to take care of the need, nor is it that they are burning out. The biggest problem is that too many of "healers" are clueless when it comes to PTSD. Sounds harsh? Yes, but it is heartbreakingly true.

Ever since the campaign in Afghanistan, there was a great need to play catchup to the veterans we already had needing help. How did they expect to be prepared for any of the troops they knew would need help? Didn't anyone think of stocking the military and the VA with qualified PTSD experts? What did they think would happen when more troops were sent into Iraq on top of the veterans already waiting for care? Remember this was at the same time we were finally getting thru to Vietnam veterans about taking care of their own combat related wound of PTSD.

The people advising the military about mental health were telling them that either they had a tsunami coming or the soldiers claiming PTSD were looking for a lifetime free ride. Commanders were still dealing with their own dismissal of the realities of combat trauma, just as some were using personality disorders as a quick campaign against the soldiers to get them off the books instead of providing them with a lifetime of care for their wounds. Remember, there were over 22,000 dishonorably or "less than honorably" discharged, leaving them absolutely nothing available to them. Service organizations would not help them. They were not able to get any care at all from the government and as for jobs, even if they could work, employers would toss out their applications without consideration. Given the fact the unemployment pool was growing, there was no need at all to even think of what could have been behind the "less than honorable" discharge.

When the kicking out began it also sent a message to the brains of the commanders that PTSD was not really a wound and they were just not tough enough.

As the years went on, it changed to the troops just needed "train their brains" to become "resilient" so they pushed Battlemind telling them that they could just get tough and suck it up, and oh, by the way, PTSD is real but if you get it, it's your fault. Check out the Battlemind program and the way it began. Whatever message they were supposed to get after the first couple of minutes was lost.

The biggest problem is that while most working with the troops may be really bright when it comes to mental health, they are clueless about PTSD, the one thing going on in the minds of the troops they should have been experts on.

The psychologist and psychiatrists along with chaplains, trained by the military, later entering into the VA, never got the real scoop on PTSD but they were expected to treat it. This was happening at the same time colleges were turning out mental health providers with a full range of knowledge regarding PTSD to treat it. One more reason why depending on where a veteran lives, their care can be anywhere from wonderful to abysmal. We tend to assume that if someone has a degree and is on the job, they are experts on what they treat but this was not the case.

It was training them the usual way other psychology students were trained, looking for the usual mental health illnesses instead of Post Traumatic Stress. This was made crystal clear when the misdiagnoses began and the troops were being discharged under every illness other than PTSD. One thing you have to understand about PTSD is if they are looking for any other illness, they will find it even though they may be looking at PTSD. PTSD comes only after trauma but can look like a lot of other illnesses including heart problems and gastrointestinal. Instead of noticing what was happening around the country with training to address people after crisis and traumatic events, the military was performing with their head in the sand. This is not a baseless claim. I've talked to too many veterans over the years telling me they were treated by idiots when it came to what was going on inside of them. They were given bags filled with prescription medications and very little therapy or information on what PTSD was.

What was the military thinking when they trained these mental health experts when they were not addressing the number one cause of mental health crisis with troops deployed into two military campaigns? Some VA doctors were fully trained and knew what they were talking about. The veterans were treated with medications and talk therapy. The problem here is that they were not told what they really needed to hear so they understood exactly where PTSD came from and why it "picked" on them instead of buddies they served with. They also had no clue they were supposed to address all aspects of their being with spiritual healing as well as physical healing on top of mental healing.

This is the most mind boggling aspect of all. When you think about what programs followed from yoga to martial arts, from art and writing for therapy, all the way up to civilian spiritual programs being studied over the years, you'd think the military was paying attention to at least some of this, but they were not. They also never addressed the need for the families to be educated on what PTSD was so they could help with the healing instead of making things worse.

When the military became overwhelmed by suicides going up every year, again, they took no clue from the civilian world. While they were well aware crisis teams responded to the people in New York after 9-11, they would not let that reaction to trauma penetrate into addressing crisis in the units deployed into combat.

Chaplains were not trained to address it. Mental health professionals were not trained properly. All this lead to what we've been seeing and unfortunately, they are nowhere close to being prepared for what is to come. The numbers keep going up for the troops and our veterans committing suicide along with attempted suicides. The numbers keep going up when it comes to families falling apart while commanders look for excuses instead of the basis for the problems the families face. Drug and alcohol abuse is seen as a discipline issue instead of self-medicating. Dangerous driving is the cause for reprimand instead of a clue these are the men and women willing to lay down their lives for the sake of their countrymen and would not so easily change into people with no regard for the lives of others. The same applies with domestic violence when the soldier responds to someone with sudden violence when they had absolutely no history of it in the past.

What happened at Fort Hood needs to be looked at but not the way they are looking at it. The tragedy of the safe zone being invaded by one of their own will end up complicating the traumas of war so severely that no amount of pills will ease it. If they are responding with what they've already been doing addressing PTSD, then we can expect far more tragedies to come.

Shortage of military therapists creates strain
By KIMBERLY HEFLING (AP)

WASHINGTON — Amputations. Combat stress. Divorce. Suicide. For troubled service members, military therapists are at their sides.

But with the U.S. fighting two wars, an acute shortage of trained personnel has left these therapists emotional drained and overworked, with limited time to prepare for their own war deployments.

An Army psychiatrist is suspected in the shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, and the rampage is raising questions about whether there's enough help for the helpers, even though it's unclear whether that stress or fear of his pending service in Afghanistan might be to blame.

An uncle of Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan said Saturday that Hasan was deeply affected by his work treating soldiers returning from war zones. "I think I saw him with tears in his eyes when he was talking about some of patients, when they came overseas from the battlefield," Rafik Hamad told The Associated Press from his home near the West Bank town of Ramallah.

Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pa., a psychologist in the Navy Reserves, said the toll is sometimes described as "compassion fatigue" or "vicarious trauma."
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Shortage of military therapists creates strain

Right after Fort Hood was traumatized, an ex-employee in Orlando went to kill people he used to work with. He killed one and wounded several others. What came after was that a church was opened up to the survivors and their families and crisis teams were sent in to address this horrific event. These are highly trained people on trauma. They did not send in any people they could get just to have someone there. They knew untrained people would add to the crisis. Who knows who will be sent to help the survivors of the Fort Hood massacre or if anyone will be sent to help the families scattered around the country to cope with their own trauma. Given what we've already seen, it's easy to guess they haven't even thought about this at all.

As for this evil committed by a "healer" we also need to be asking what he was telling the soldiers going to him for help after the traumas they had seen in Iraq and Afghanistan. Did he fill their heads with facts or did he tell them things that would make their PTSD worse? Was he part of an even bigger problem in the military behind what we've seen?