Army enlisting families on soldier healing

As Gomer Pyle said, "Surprise, surprise, surprise!" It looks like the Army is finally getting this right. Ignoring how important the families are when it comes to mending the bodies and minds of combat troops has contributed to what we've been reading all of these years. Now, maybe, God willing, they finally have their ammo loaded in the right weapons. It did little good telling them they could train their brains to be "tough" when they already were and ended up blaming themselves for PTSD. It didn't do much good to show them a Power Point that put them to sleep. It has done little good to medicate them into numbness. Even for the veterans they managed to get past the stigma of PTSD so they understood it, they were not served because the families they needed to help them heal were left out. A soldier could go and deny things they were doing either because they didn't want to admit it, forgot about it or didn't think it was important to mention. A spouse can correct what the veteran got wrong. They can also end up discovering how they react matters. Respond the right way and they help the healing but if they respond the wrong way because they didn't understand or know what to do, they made things worse. This gives everyone a better chance to heal.

Army unveils new website for wounded, injured, ill soldiers' families and caregivers

Written by
Philip Grey
The Leaf-Chronicle

The Army Warrior Transition Command has added another tool in its holistic approach to caring for wounded, ill and injured soldiers.

Available online at Army Warrior Transition, the Comprehensive Transition Plan Learning Module is a resource developed to help families and caregivers of a Warrior in Transition, defined as "a soldier with complex medical needs requiring six months or more of treatment or rehabilitation."

The definition can include soldiers severely wounded in combat, injured on the job in peacetime or wartime, or suffering from a long-term illness.

At the Army's 29 Warrior Transition Units in the United States and Europe, supporting some 8,500 soldiers requiring long-term treatment and rehabilitation, the soldiers are given one mission — to heal and transition successfully, either back to active duty or into the civilian world.

In the past decade the Army has worked on treatment methods that go beyond medical care and make soldiers active participants in their own treatment.

The online program focuses on educating family members and caregivers on the role they can play in assisting the soldier through the process, which consists of seven parts — intake, assessment, goal setting, rehabilitation, review, pre-transition and post-transition.
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Army unveils new website for wounded