As PTSD Problems Surface, Providers Get Ready

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As PTSD Problems Surface, Providers Get Ready

(September 29, 2007) -- They are out there, more and more of them every day, veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who have survived the war physically, but perhaps not emotionally.

"I expect to see a lot of them," said Mike Baddin, a mental health social worker with the St. Louis County Department of Public Health and Human Services.

A large cross-section of local people -- from therapists to college professors to hospital chaplains -- gathered for a daylong training session Friday to learn how best to seek and provide support for these veterans. Many are encountering veterans who may not have full-blown mental health issues but have returned from war as different people.

Shirley Reierson, a professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth, recalled one former student who had served in Iraq. The two had coffee one day, and she could see that the student had lost his youth in the war. "He was half proud of that, but also felt the loss of his youth," Reierson said. She expects to see more students like him.

"My hope is to develop a consciousness of the needs of these young men and women, and begin looking at what UMD can do to accommodate them," Reierson said, explaining her reason for attending the conference.

Deborah Josephson, supervisor of the St. Louis County Public Health and Human Services adult mental health unit, began organizing the event after her daughter's friend returned from a tour in Iraq. The conference, titled "I'm Back Home But the War Isn't Over," was sponsored by local and state organizations, including the Northeast Behavioral Emergency Response Team and Duluth's Human Development Center.

"It's very personal, for me," Josephson said. "These are our own people who are coming back. We need to support our families, neighbors and friends."

Josephson now hopes to bring the conference to northern St. Louis County to reach service providers there.

To graphically illustrate just what veterans are dealing with, Master Sgt. Wayne Kettelhut from the 148th Fighter Wing based in Duluth showed video clips from his experience in Iraq.

In one, American troops are filming a street where they suspect an improvised explosive device is hidden. The camera holds steady as another detonation team pulls to a stop, then jumps crazily as troops from the second unit leap to the ground and instantly disappear in a plume of orange and red flames. The truck had parked on top of another IED.

In another, the video camera records soldiers' exultation as a rocket fired by an Air Force jet destroys a rooftop where suspected insurgents were stationed. "Hell, yeah!" the unseen soldiers shout in triumph as the building crumbles. "See you in hell!"

And again, Kettelhut describes how his own feelings swung from disbelief to adrenaline rush to blood lust after he shot and killed an enemy in his first firefight.

These are the experiences that veterans will carry with them, Kettelhut said.

Cracking the shell that veterans who have been through traumatic experiences tend to build can be tough, said Ernest Boswell of the St. Paul Veterans Center.

"Trauma survivors like to wrap themselves in an emotional cocoon," Boswell told the attendees. And when therapists or mental health workers try to question the veteran about the experience, most tend to recount the logistical part of what happened that day -- what road they drove down, what kind of fire they came under, what kind of cover they sought.

But that kind of answer doesn't get to the heart of that veteran's problem, Boswell said. Rather, therapists and mental health workers need to help veterans examine what they truly felt and saw -- and how to deal with those emotions in a healthy way.

"There is a misconception that mental health problems emerge right away," Baddin said. It usually takes several months to several years of stuffing those emotions before unhealthy symptoms start showing up, he said. He is working with one Iraq veteran who's afraid to fall asleep at night, and is having trouble keeping a job.

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Baddin and other county social workers are trying to prepare for that expected wave of veterans who need mental health help. For him, that means learning as much as they can about what help from local, state and federal agencies is available.

"I have great awareness of the issues" many veterans face once they return home, Biddle said, "but not about the specific treatment needs they have."

Source: Duluth News-Tribune, Minn

Last updated 10/07

As PTSD Problems Surface, Providers Get Ready

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