As a graduate student working towards my Masters Degree in Social Work degree I can honestly say that I truely want to help Veterans and their families. I also believe that it is important that a Vet help a Vet because there is a common bond between the two "SERVICE". I am reminded of a saying that "For those who fought for it, freedom has a taste the protected will never
know."
 |
| 1SG Gene Hicks Helmand, Afghanistan |
By Maria LaMagna,
Special to CNN
(CNN) -- Things probably should have turned out differently
for Samantha Schilling. The stories she
tells have dark beginnings and could have had, under different circumstances,
dark endings -- as so many stories for those in the military do. Schilling, now
31, served in the U.S. Navy from 1999 to 2003. She was never deployed but worked
as an information systems technician at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia.
Several of her friends were killed during the 2000 al Qaeda
bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, which left 17 dead and at least 37 injured.
Some of the injured were transferred to her base in Norfolk. Many of the
survivors suffered from mental trauma after the bombing. One of them, a man who
had been aboard the ship, attacked Schilling and attempted to rape her. That
assault drove home the impact that active duty had on her colleagues' mental
state. "I experienced military sexual trauma, and that just inspired
me," she said. "Coming back into civilian life, you're not the same
person you were in the military. ... You carry with you all these burdens, all
these stressors."
Schilling was released from service with an honorable
medical discharge in 2003. Since that time, she has taken on a personal mission
to help others who need counseling after military service. She's nearly
completed a masters in a joint military psychology and neuropsychology program
at the Adler School of Professional Psychology in Chicago and plans to finish
her doctorate degree in 2015.
"I'm determined to be able to be helpful to
others," she said. "Helping others helps me. ... I think therapy can
help people adapt to civilian life again instead of maladapt. People who have
PTSD and other (issues) can maladapt and cause trouble in the civilian
world."
It's no secret the U.S. military has struggled to adequately
support its troops after they leave active duty.
A large number of service members suffer from post-traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD). An estimated 11% to 20% of veterans returning from the
Iraq and Afghanistan wars suffer from the condition, according to the U.S.
Department of Veterans Affairs.
That's between 220,000 and 400,000 of the 2 million troops
deployed since the September 11 terrorist attacks.
A new study shows that only about half of U.S. service
members deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan diagnosed with PTSD received any
treatment for it.
And statistics from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
show that about 18 veterans commit suicide every day.
The VA has stepped up efforts to expand care and recently
announced plans to hire 1,600 more mental health professionals and 300 support
staff members to help meet the increasing demand for services.
But some former active-duty service members aren't waiting
for help to arrive. Veterans have turned to psychology to become mental health
professionals, and they're filling in gaps in veteran care that government and
civilian efforts have left open. And while they are still rare, programs to
train them are slowly emerging at universities and nonprofit organizations
around the United States.
"It's
just going to increase and increase"
Born a year ago with funding from the Department of Veteran
Services in Massachusetts, a program through the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology called Train Vets to Treat Vets has recently picked up steam. It
has several goals: mentoring new veterans, providing services to at-risk and
homeless veterans, and educating the public about ways they can help.
"As the stigma (of seeking professional mental health
treatment) breaks down more and more, and more veterans are willing to come
into treatment, (the need) is just going to increase and increase," said
Robert Chester, 25, who served in the National Guard for six years and became a
student at the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology.
"That's why we want to get more veterans into mental
health, both to break down the stigma and get more clinicians out there."
Chester is now an admissions assistant at Train Vets to
Treat Vets.
Starting the program was a joint effort between the
Massachusetts Department of Veterans' Services and veterans (Chester and
colleagues Greg Matos and Norman Tippens) who are also students at at the
school.
"We, as the veteran students, wanted to see that we
could create more of a military cohort at our school," Chester said.
"We really wanted to put something together where we can help our fellow
veterans by providing mental health services in that specific way."
Since the program's start, Chester has fielded e-mails every
day from veterans who want to get involved. Six will enroll in the school's
fall class.
Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology President
Nick Covino says the idea for the program came from a Latino mental health
program the school began about eight years ago.
"It was clear that folks who wanted to talk about
emotional issues ... want to talk about emotional issues with somebody that
understands their culture and probably want to do it with somebody that's from
their culture," Covino said. "It was a natural extension to think
about returning veterans."
Having student veterans in the program has been beneficial
not only to the veterans it has helped but to non-veteran graduate students who
want to specialize in veteran care.
From casual conversations to exchanging papers and working
on doctoral projects together, a collaboration between veteran and non-veteran
students is "radically changing the academic culture of our learning
community," Covino said.
Laptop battlefield
Leaning over an occasionally beeping laptop in a downtown
Chicago office building, Robert Kyle rolls up the sleeves of a blue button-down
shirt to reveal heavily tattooed forearms. On one, a drawing that looks like
the Grim Reaper. On the other, columns of initials. There are so many, his arm
is more ink than skin. He explains that they're the initials of friends who
died alongside him while deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. There are 53, he
says. But there are more to add he hasn't gotten around to yet.
Kyle, who goes by his first and middle name online for
security reasons, has his own set of challenges. At 26, he has survived three
deployments and sustained a traumatic brain injury. He enlisted in the Army
when he was 17 and served from 2003 to 2009.
Although he still carries burdens from his deployment, since
his return, he hasn't forgotten about his military family. Some, he knows
personally; others, he's only met through that beeping laptop. He has dedicated
his life to helping veterans connect to one another and improve their mental
health.
Kyle works as a peer coach at Vets Prevail, a free
online forum and multistep mental health program. It was founded in 2009 by a
small group of professionals, almost all of them veterans.
While working as a peer coach, Kyle is pursuing a graduate
degree in psychology from DePaul University.
Six salaried professionals work at Vets Prevail, as well as
three peer coaches who directly interact with veterans online. Although the
peer coaches are not doctors, they complete a training process, and most
important, Kyle says, they have all served on active duty.
"When they hear that you have done what they've done,
(veterans) tend to open up more than someone that has never been in a combat
zone. That opens a little more trust," Kyle says. "Veterans are doing
this for veterans."
Kyle retired from service in 2009 after his injury and went
back to school, earning a degree in psychology from Lees-McRae College in North
Carolina.
Since that time, he has worked to develop Vets Prevail. Now,
more than 8,000 veterans from about 5,000 ZIP codes turn to the site to chat
and learn coping mechanisms, and membership is rapidly increasing.
Justin Savage, a 32-year-old Army veteran who works as the
head of program development for Vets Prevail, says a large part of that success
is the users' assurance that the experts on the other side of the computer screen
are speaking their language.
"We live and breathe accountability," said Savage,
who returned from Iraq in 2005. "Having vets do it really brings a new
level."
"A really good fit"
It makes sense that veterans would want to become mental
health professionals, psychologist Joe Troiani says. In a military culture built on
camaraderie, the desire to help a fellow veteran is natural and powerful.
Troiani, an associate professor at the Adler School of Professional
Psychology, where Schilling is a student, is also a retired Navy commander
and is determined to ensure that veterans get the help they need.
"If I was in trouble, I could pick up the phone and
call some of my veteran friends," Troiani said. "You and I could have
served together, and I have your back, you have my back. If something happens
to you, I'm going to make sure that your family is taken care of."
The Adler School offers training for a new post-doctorate
specialty called "military clinical psychology" and since the program's
start two years ago has trained about 20 students per class. The need is
greater, but 20 is the cutoff to ensure the best training, Troiani says.
Entering the mental health field can be "a really good
fit personality-wise" for veterans, says Bret Moore, a former
active-duty Army psychologist who completed two tours in Iraq.
"(Service members) want to protect and help people get
through difficult times," Moore said. "That's really what a
psychologist does: helps people who are more vulnerable, or not as strong in a
certain sense, get through difficult times."
Taking responsibility for another human life is a familiar
duty for veterans, Covino says.
"To have been in situations where they've needed to
rely on judgment and develop a capacity for reflection, an ability to act
autonomously and courageously. ... Those are qualities of character you can't
teach," Covino said.
"They haven't experienced it"
Jon Neely, a 45-year-old living in Springfield, Illinois,
has been using Vets Prevail for several months and says he logs on for about an
hour every week, though when he first began using it, he logged on every day.
Neely served in Kosovo from 1999 to 2000 and retired from the military in 2005.
"All too often, you go seek help from somebody that is
book-learned, but they don't understand," he said. "They don't know.
To me, getting help or seeking help from a non-veteran is like going to a
marriage counselor that has never been married. They know all the book
knowledge, but they haven't experienced it."
Sarah Bonner, 31, an Air Force veteran who was medically
discharged from Ramstein Air Base in Germany in 2006, is an active user of Vets
Prevail. She says that talking to a "like-minded" person is what has
kept her coming back to the site.
She has bonded with the peer coaches, to whom she refers by
their first names like friends, in a way she did not expect.
"There were a couple times recently, I was at a really
low point," she said. "I was angry, and I wasn't holding back with
what I said. They don't care. If I want to cuss out and threaten to punch
something, they might say, 'Let's think of softer things than the wall to
punch.' ... They let you talk about the stuff that's ugly."
"Why did all of us serve?"
Training veterans to treat other veterans does involve some
risk, Chester says. If veterans are not stable themselves, they should not
treat others as mental health professionals. For that reason, it can be a good
idea for them to work with a psychologist even while they administer care to
others.
There is so much training and hands-on experience involved
in a post-doctorate program that it is highly unlikely a veteran who is still
feeling unstable would make it all the way through, Troiani says. Rarely, but
occasionally, a veteran will say, "This program is not a good fit for
me," he says.
But if it is a good fit, the results can be rewarding.
"Why did all of us serve if not for each other?"
Kyle asked. "Just because we're not in the military any more, it doesn't
mean we are no longer brother and sister. It's a bond we'll have for the rest
of our lives."
