Veterans Resources
I have worked with Vets from most of the service branches as a therapist in the last four years with much of my contact involved crisis interventions where there were some total melt-downs. The last incident involved a SWAT team deployment. Sometimes, folks tend to over-react when Vets have these melt-downs. Why? Well, not everyone is trained as a military sniper or Special Forces combatant, and that gets some special attention.
Personally, I grew up in a military family and spent a lot of time on Army, Navy and Airforce installations back then.
I experienced first hand the issues that occured when active duty military servicemen return to civilian life as Veterans and have serious re-integration issues.
Because of this professional and personal history of mine, working with Veterans experiencing personal issues is a passion of mine.
That said, I think it’s important to remind ourselves that PTSD is not exclusively a problem that is exclusively found in the Veteran communities. As you migh imagine, PTSD can occur from any numer of life events. The letter “P” stands for POST, the letter “T” stands for TRAUMATIC, the letter “S” stands for STRESS, and the letter “D” stands for DISORDER. You don’t see a V for Veteran because the disorder happens in many situations. Wartime or even deployment is just one paticular situation that Veterans are exposed to.
When military discharge of a person who has a known or even unknown PTSD diagnosis occurs, this greatly complicates the stresses of re-adjustment and re-integration back into civilian live. As you can see, for some Veterans, the reintegration itself can present a lot of adjustment issues. These same issues may serve as “triggers” for either a diagnosed or undiagnosed PTSD condition.
In some cases there may even be a history of being exposed to head trauma while in the military, which if severe enough can create another bad actor, TBI or Traumatic Brain Injury.
I don’t offer the new EMDR intervention for those suffering deep and active troubling symptoms from diagnosed PTSD, I do refer out to individuals who are trained, effective EMDR clinicians.
Again, these types of traumas also not exclusively a only Veterans issue, but it is prevalent among that community.
Other sources of PTSD and TBI can be a result of sexual assault traumas, violent accidents, witnessing some type of violent event, being brutally assaulted. I really hope you get the idea!
In the last two years, I discovered a great resource SPECIFICALLY for Veterans that I want to share.
That resource is the Headspace and Timing webpage of Duane France who has been a leader in the Veterans Mental Health Space. See some information about his current work at: https://www.fcsprings.com/about-us/leadership-staff/duane-france. Duane has graciously agreed to allow me to share these with my readers.
I have attached a link to the site below and within the site is a treasure of blogs, resources AND great podcasts.
You will also see that in addition to being a licensed clinician, Duane is a prolific writer as well.
A very dedicated and profusely productive advocate for Veterans….He Is!
Here is the link to his site…..enjoy exploring!!
Another great website for Veterans and families you will definitely enjoy and find interesting is Veterans MTC. They can be found on both Instagram and Facebook. You can give it a look by clicking their web-page http://veteransmtc.com
Headspace and Timing Podcast Link