Utah war veterans share sobering perspectives of PTSD

Utah war veterans share sobering perspectives of PTSD Summit
 Counselors, social workers learn about veterans’ challenges.
By Kristen Moulton

The Salt Lake Tribune
Mar 30 2012

(Steve Griffin | The Salt Lake Tribune) Iraq War veteran Gordon Ewell, left, of Eagle Mountain, shakes hands with Col. Gregory D. Gadson, who is with the U.S. Army Wounded Warrior Program, as they talk during the Utah Veterans and Families Summit at the Calvin L. Rampton Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City on Friday.

Justin Watt, an Iraq war veteran, felt he had landed on another planet when he came back to America.

"You go from playing high-stakes poker and doing stuff that matters," to dealing with clueless civilians, said Watt, who was on a Friday panel telling social workers and therapists what it’s like to return from war. The discussion was one of more than 30 sessions at the Utah Veterans and Families Summit, which itself was part of the three-day Generations conference put on by the University of Utah Neuropsychiatric Institute.

A job fair for veterans was also part of the summit at the Calvin L. Rampton Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City. The disconnect that warriors feel was the focus of the panel, led by psychologists at the Veterans Affairs George E. Wahlen Medical Center who work with vets who have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and moral injury. That’s the name used to describe the suffering many vets have over what they did or did not do in war.

 In Iraq, Watt said, "I needed to keep my guys alive and myself alive and hunt down the Number 2 targeted guy in al-Qaida." Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. military airstrike in 2006. Watt was in the 101st Airborne, which was part of the mission to get al-Zarqawi.

Back home, Watt’s job at a buddy’s Salt Lake City computer company put him in the cross hairs of angry customers. "I come home and guys are screaming at me because their computer has been out of their hands for eight hours," said Watt. "You just want to choke them." Vets with PTSD often are angry, but it’s complicated by the fact they are trained, as warriors, to use anger, said Tanya Miller, a VA psychologist.

 "They are trained to turn fear into anger and anger into action," she said. read more here