Warrior Relaxation Response Center helping PTSD veterans to relax

Winning the battle against PTSD, fighting a battle for legitimacy
Comments 3
Therapy gets results, but not funding
August 08, 2011 1:00 PM
BARBARA COTTER
THE GAZETTE


In the two decades since Daniel Nieto served in the Gulf War, anxiety has dogged him nearly every day. He has trouble sleeping. Noises make him jump. He has panic attacks, an inability to concentrate and a social phobia that makes it difficult for him to be around people.

And this, he says, is just a “mild” case of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

“I talk to guys who have it far worse than me,” the 42-year-old Army vet says.

Nieto is convinced that if active-duty military and vets with PTSD and other stress-related problems could spend time at Antione Johnson’s Warrior Relaxation Response Center in Colorado Springs, they’d find the same relief from anxiety that he has in just the few times he’s been there.

“Every day of your life, the problems follow you. Coming here to a place like this is tranquility,” says Nieto, who claims to be sleeping better and has greater control of his panic attacks.

Johnson would be delighted if more members of the military, past and present, availed themselves of his spa-like facility, tucked away in a nondescript strip mall near Circle Drive and Airport Road. A Gulf War vet himself, Johnson invested his and his wife’s savings to start the center in 2010, specifically to help people with PTSD, and he had high hopes that Fort Carson would send over the many “wounded warriors” who have suffered the emotional fallout from multiple deployments Iraq and Afghanistan.



Read more: Winning the battle against PTSD fighting a battle for legitimacy