Kansas Iraq Veteran Personal Battle with PTSD Becomes Cause for Others

Kan. vet’s struggle with PTSD motivates desire to help others 
KHI News Service
By Andy Marso
December 28, 2014

After his Army service, Will Stucker earned a bachelor’s degree in family studies at Manhattan Christian College and is now working on a master’s degree in clinical psychology at Emporia State University. He plans to work with other veterans and help them overcome post-traumatic stress syndrome.- photo by Andy Marso

Need is great About one-third of the 2.6 million veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have been diagnosed with mental illnesses like PTSD, anxiety and depression. The VA Eastern Kansas Health Care System, which includes the Topeka hospital where Stucker was treated, is seeing more patients for PTSD every year: up from 1,297 in 2011 to 2,216 in 2014. The costs of PTSD treatment there this year exceeded $28 million

TOPEKA — Sitting in a Junction City coffee shop with his laptop and a pile of textbooks splayed on a table, Will Stucker looks like any other college student, if a bit older than average. But Stucker, 38, has taken a different path to college than most of his classmates at Emporia State University.

His path took him to South Korea and Kuwait, then to a tank rolling toward Baghdad, then to an armored Humvee on the streets of a small town in Iraq where insurgents repeatedly tried to kill him — and two of them almost succeeded.

Then, finally, to a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Topeka, where counselors helped him work through the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) he came home with. Stucker is working toward a master’s degree in clinical psychology so that he can help other veterans overcome PTSD. read more here