Vets4Warriors offers help to Fort Hood soldiers

Published: Wednesday, February 02, 2011
By Seth Augenstein/The Star-Ledger
After returning home from Iraq in 1992, John Lurker struggled to restart a normal life.

The Desert Storm Army veteran changed jobs frequently. He had marriage troubles and eventually divorced. He especially had problems dealing with conflict, he said, refusing to yield to other people even when he knew he was on the wrong side of an argument.

"There was no empathy. No sympathy. It was only ‘preservation mode,’" he said.

At his lowest point last year, feeling distressed and out of sorts, he called the "Vet2Vet" helpline, run by UMDNJ, where he was directed to seek to professional help and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome.

With the benefit of professional help, the Hackettstown man’s life started to improve, he said.
But it all began with the helpline.

Soldiers on active duty will now have the the chance to get the same type of help.
The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, which runs the 5-year-old Vet2Vet program with the New Jersey Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, is offering a new "Vets4Warriors" helpline to the soldiers of Fort Hood in Texas, the most populous Army base in the nation.

As of Tuesday, the Vets4Warriors program is now providing 24-hour help to the roughly 50,000 soldiers who are stationed at Fort Hood. Whether it’s depression, thoughts of suicide, alcohol problems or just advice about how to navigate the military echelons, the veterans staffing the phone lines are listening and offering advice.

The helpline becomes available after a spate of suicides at Fort Hood. The number of soldiers who committed suicide doubled to 22 in 2010, according to the Army. It was the most suicides on an Army base since at least 2003, despite the fact that there are about 150 behavioral health workers on staff at the base, according to Army officials. On one September weekend alone last year, there were four suicides, according to Christopher Kosseff, the president and CEO of UMDNJ’s University Behavioral HealthCare, which administers the call center.
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UMDNJ offers help to Fort Hood Soldiers