Veterans find help in battle for mental health

Veterans find help in battle for mental health (videos)

By David S. Glasier
DGlasier@News-Herald.com

Helping veterans of military service overcome mental-health challenges is the life's work of Dr. Edgardo Padin-Rivera, Ken Smith and Dr. Tina Brown.

Padin-Rivera is chief of psychological services and coordinator of post-traumatic stress disorder programs for the Louis Stokes Cleveland Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

He is a nationally recognized authority on the diagnosis and treatment of PTSD, an anxiety disorder triggered by exposure to military combat, terrorist attack, sexual or physical assault, torture or natural disasters such as a hurricane or earthquake.

Delayed diagnosis

Tim DeWolf was a changed man, and not for the better, when he finished his hitch in the U.S. Army in 1970. The agent of change was a 14-month tour of duty in Vietnam.

"I went right from the wrestling team at North (High School) to the Army," DeWolf said. "Within a year, I was in combat. Three and a half years later, I was on the street as a civilian. Sure, you change."

DeWolf was prone to depression, fits of anger and irrational behavior.

"If I lost my car keys, I might destroy the house looking for them. Nothing was right unless I found those keys," he recalled.

It wasn't until 2001 that the then 53-year-old Mentor resident got into a Veterans Administration counseling program and was determined to have a significant disability caused by PTSD. The diagnosis brought clarity not just to DeWolf but to his wife, Lee Ann.

"We got married in 1982, and for the longest time we thought he was an idiot who was angry all the time," Lee Ann DeWolf said. "He would just blow up. I lived with it. My kids lived with it. All those years, what was bothering him didn't have a name. Then they tell us about PTSD and it's like, ‘Oh yeah. That's about right.' "

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Veterans find help in battle for mental health