Author: Justin T. McDaniel Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0197646581 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 397
Book Description
This volume provides several perspectives that help practitioners, advocates, and policymakers understand the impact of historical and recent wars on U.S. Military veterans. The chapters address newly recognized psychological conditions as risk factors for more serious diagnosable mental health disorders.
Author: Marguerite Guzman Bouvard Publisher: Prometheus Books ISBN: 1616145544 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 271
Book Description
There’s no real homecoming for many of our veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They may go through the motions of daily life in their hometowns, but the terrible sights and sounds of war are still fresh in their minds. This empathic, inside look into the lives of our combat veterans reveals the lingering impact that the longest wars in our nation’s history continue to have on far too many of our finest young people. Basing her account on numerous interviews with veterans and their families, the author examines the factors that have made these recent conflicts especially trying. A major focus of the book is the extreme duress that is a daily part of a soldier’s life in combat zones with no clear frontlines or perimeters. Having to cope with unrecognizable enemies in the midst of civilian populations and attacks from hidden weapons like improvised explosive devices exacts a heavy toll. Compounding the problem is the all-volunteer nature of our armed forces, which often demands multiple deployments of enlistees. This results in frequent cases of post-traumatic stress disorder and families disrupted by the long absence of one and sometimes both parents. The author also discusses the lack of connectedness between civilian society and military personnel, leading to inadequate healthcare for many veterans. This deficiency has been highlighted by the urgent need to treat traumatic brain injuries in survivors of explosions and the high veteran suicide rate. Bouvard concludes on a positive note by discussing some of the surprising and encouraging ways that the chasm between civilian and military life is being bridged to help reintegrate our returning soldiers. For veterans, their families, and especially for civilians unaware of how much our soldiers have endured, The Invisible Wounds of War is important reading.
Author: IOS Press Publisher: IOS Press ISBN: 1614991898 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 232
Book Description
The number of cases of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) affecting both combat veterans and survivors of armed conflict has increased in recent years. Exposure to traumatic events can cause PTSD, and the serious consequences of this disorder can often lead to impulsive and destructive behaviors such as drug abuse and uncontrollable anger. Combat related PTSD is also one of the strongest contributing factors to the high suicide risk in returning troops. This book presents the collected papers from the 2012 NATO Advanced Study Institute (ASI): Invisible Wounds – New Tools to Enhance PTSD Diagnosis and Treatment (IW2012), held in Ankara, Turkey, in June 2012. This ASI was attended by 56 scientists and representatives from NATO and Partner countries, and expert contributors from nine different countries were invited to take part in the workshop. The aim of the ASI was to equip participants with an in-depth knowledge of the latest theoretical advances in neuroscience, psychotherapy and pharmacology, and thereby to assist them in the task of assessment, diagnosis, prevention and treatment of PTSD and related co-morbid disorders. The book is divided into four sections: a review of the latest science related to theoretical constructs and associated neurosciences; screening; stress inoculation training; and co-morbid issues: considering the whole person in treatment. This book will provide a valuable resource for all those whose work involves dealing with post traumatic stress disorder.
Author: David Kieran Publisher: NYU Press ISBN: 1479824003 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 543
Book Description
The surprising story of the Army’s efforts to combat PTSD and traumatic brain injury The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have taken a tremendous toll on the mental health of our troops. In 2005, then-Senator Barack Obama took to the Senate floor to tell his colleagues that “many of our injured soldiers are returning from Iraq with traumatic brain injury,” which doctors were calling the “signature wound” of the Iraq War. Alarming stories of veterans taking their own lives raised a host of vital questions: Why hadn’t the military been better prepared to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI)? Why were troops being denied care and sent back to Iraq? Why weren’t the Army and the VA doing more to address these issues? Drawing on previously unreleased documents and oral histories, David Kieran tells the broad and nuanced story of the Army’s efforts to understand and address these issues, challenging the popular media view that the Iraq War was mismanaged by a callous military unwilling to address the human toll of the wars. The story of mental health during this war is the story of how different groups—soldiers, veterans and their families, anti-war politicians, researchers and clinicians, and military leaders—approached these issues from different perspectives and with different agendas. It is the story of how the advancement of medical knowledge moves at a different pace than the needs of an Army at war, and it is the story of how medical conditions intersect with larger political questions about militarism and foreign policy. This book shows how PTSD, TBI, and suicide became the signature wounds of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, how they prompted change within the Army itself, and how mental health became a factor in the debates about the impact of these conflicts on US culture.
Author: Terri L. Tanielian Publisher: RAND Corporation ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 72
Book Description
Summarizes key findings and recommendations from Invisible Wounds of War: Psychological and Cognitive Injuries, Their Consequences, and Services to Assist Recovery (Tanielian and Jaycox [Eds.], MG-720-CCF, 2008), a comprehensive study of the post-deployment health-related needs associated with post-traumatic stress disorder, major depression, and traumatic brain injury among veterans of Operations Enduring Freedom/Iraqi Freedom.
Author: Richard F. Mollica Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press ISBN: 0826516416 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 290
Book Description
In these personal reflections on his thirty years of clinical work with victims of genocide, torture, and abuse in the United States, Cambodia, Bosnia, and other parts of the world, Richard Mollica describes the surprising capacity of traumatized people to heal themselves. Here is how Neil Boothby, Director of the Program on Forced Migration and Health at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, describes the book: "Mollica provides a wealth of ethnographic and clinical evidence that suggests the human capacity to heal is innate--that the 'survival instinct' extends beyond the physical to include the psychological as well. He enables us to see how recovery from 'traumatic life events' needs to be viewed primarily as a 'mystery' to be listened to and explored, rather than solely as a 'problem' to be identified and solved. Healing involves a quest for meaning--with all of its emotional, cultural, religious, spiritual and existential attendants--even when bio-chemical reactions are also operative." Healing Invisible Wounds reveals how trauma survivors, through the telling of their stories, teach all of us how to deal with the tragic events of everyday life. Mollica's important discovery that humiliation--an instrument of violence that also leads to anger and despair--can be transformed through his therapeutic project into solace and redemption is a remarkable new contribution to survivors and clinicians. This book reveals how in every society we have to move away from viewing trauma survivors as "broken people" and "outcasts" to seeing them as courageous people actively contributing to larger social goals. When violence occurs, there is damage not only to individuals but to entire societies, and to the world. Through the journey of self-healing that survivors make, they enable the rest of us not only as individuals but as entire communities to recover from injury in a violent world.
Author: Cheryl Lawhorne-Scott Publisher: Government Institutes ISBN: 9781605907246 Category : Reference Languages : en Pages : 290
Book Description
In Combat-Related Traumatic Brain Injury and PTSD: A Resource and Recovery Guide, authors Cheryl Lawhorne and Don Philpott offer guidance for the returning veteran, from treatment options, to diagnostic criteria and techniques, to resources for rehabilitation and support.
Author: Mark Charles Russell Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 0415889774 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 314
Book Description
Treating Traumatic Stress Injuries in Military Personnel offers a comprehensive treatment manual for mental health professionals treating traumatic stress injuries in veterans. It is the first book to combine the most recent knowledge about new paradigms of combat-related traumatic stress injuries and offers a practical guide for treating the spectrum of traumatic stress injuries with EMDR, recognized by the Department of Veterans Affairs and Department of Defense clinical practice guidelines as one of the most well-suited treatments for military-related stress injuries.
Author: Yochi Dreazen Publisher: Crown ISBN: 0385347855 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 346
Book Description
The unforgettable story of a military family that lost two sons—one to suicide and one in combat—and channeled their grief into fighting the armed forces’ suicide epidemic. Major General Mark Graham was a decorated two-star officer whose integrity and patriotism inspired his sons, Jeff and Kevin, to pursue military careers of their own. His wife Carol was a teacher who held the family together while Mark's career took them to bases around the world. When Kevin and Jeff die within nine months of each other—Kevin commits suicide and Jeff is killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq—Mark and Carol are astonished by the drastically different responses their sons’ deaths receive from the Army. While Jeff is lauded as a hero, Kevin’s death is met with silence, evidence of the terrible stigma that surrounds suicide and mental illness in the military. Convinced that their sons died fighting different battles, Mark and Carol commit themselves to transforming the institution that is the cornerstone of their lives. The Invisible Front is the story of how one family tries to set aside their grief and find purpose in almost unimaginable loss. The Grahams work to change how the Army treats those with PTSD and to erase the stigma that prevents suicidal troops from getting the help they need before making the darkest of choices. Their fight offers a window into the military’s institutional shortcomings and its resistance to change – failures that have allowed more than 3,000 troops to take their own lives since 2001. Yochi Dreazen, an award-winning journalist who has covered the military since 2003, has been granted remarkable access to the Graham family and tells their story in the full context of two of America’s longest wars. Dreazen places Mark and Carol’s personal journey, which begins when they fall in love in college and continues through the end of Mark's thirty-four year career in the Army, against the backdrop of the military’s ongoing suicide spike, which shows no signs of slowing. With great sympathy and profound insight, The Invisible Front details America's problematic treatment of the troops who return from war far different than when they'd left and uses the Graham family’s work as a new way of understanding the human cost of war and its lingering effects off the battlefield.
Author: Marguerite Guzman Bouvard Publisher: Prometheus Books ISBN: 1616145536 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 248
Book Description
The lingering impact of the longest wars in our nation's history is examined in this thoughtful work based on numerous interviews with veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan and their families.
Author: Justin T. McDaniel
Author: Marguerite Guzman Bouvard
Author: IOS Press
Author: David Kieran
Author: Terri L. Tanielian
Author: Richard F. Mollica
Author: Cheryl Lawhorne-Scott
Author: Mark Charles Russell
Author: Yochi Dreazen
Author: Marguerite Guzman Bouvard