PTSD Veterans Coming Home Feeling Isolated and Alone

Wounds of war are often hidden, deadly 
KSL News Utah
By Sandra Olney
February 20, 2015

"Everything is kind of flipped upside down on me," Ty Davis, a recent veteran of the Army, said. "I don't know how to adjust right now like get along with people."

SALT LAKE CITY — The popularity of the film, "American Sniper" has prompted a national discussion about the hidden wounds of war like mental illness and suicide.

In Utah, therapies designed to heal those wounds are being researched and practiced. They are wounds inflicted during the life-and-death battle that begins for many veterans when they try to move from military service back to civilian life.

"It was very depressing. I didn't feel like I fit in. I knew I didn't fit in anymore," said Michelle Fisher, an Air Force veteran who left the battlefields of the Middle East only to fight a new enemy back home: depression.

Marine veteran Kris Good agrees: "Nobody was watching your back, you weren't watching anybody else's back like we were over there."

There were similar emotions for Army veteran Tabatha Worth after she returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan.

"I felt isolated. I felt alone," she said.

Depression led to thoughts of helplessness and suicide.

"It was like I had all that pride, all that honor and integrity, and then I didn't have that anymore, and I was lost; I was adrift; I was hopeless; I just wanted to end it," Worth said.

Dr. Craig Bryan is a retired Air Force psychologist who directs the National Center for Veterans Studies at the University of Utah.

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