Troops stepping up for mental health
Just A Grunt sent us a link today from CNN in regards to the healthcare profession looking to returning troops to step into the mental healthcare field with help in Massachusetts from the State Department of Veterans’ Services;
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.”
It makes absolute sense, because who knows what the troops have been through in war better than the troops know?
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.
I just want to know why the Department of Veterans Affairs isn’t involved in it since they need more mental health clinicians than anyone else?
Category: Veteran Health Care, Veterans' Affairs Department
I just got out after 8 years in as a combat medic with almost all my time in the infantry. I had been planning on attending nursing school because I enjoyed fixing people, I had never really considered mental health as an option because even the “military” shrinks dont “get it” a lot of the time but having seen that there are programs to help educate and train veterans to help veterans i am reconsidering my post military education track.
@1, there are good reasons to go into the menthal health care service. You don’t have to become a shrink to do that kind of work.
There are plenty of occupations in mental health, such as occupational therapy and music therapy, that don’t require your being a shrink.
I got out of the military in 2008 and I have always found it difficult to understand how everyone talks about the negative stigma towards soldiers seeking mental health care. I feel like then and even more-so now that everyone is all but happy to seek mental health care and to also tell everyone about it. I also saw no less than 4 shrinks during post deployment SRP and during my journey only months later to get out-processed out of the service. Everyone of them pretty much told me I would have PTSD and if i did not i was just fooling myself and at some point i would have to deal with that fact. They made me and other soldiers feel s though we were wierd for not thinking we had mental health issues. Now my experience with the army and my experience with vets once out of the army may be an annomoly but I just have never seen the negative stigma put on mental health care and have seen many verterans embrace sort of badge of honor it is to have to have mental health services.
No civilian shrink is going to tell vets some of the things I believe they need to understand about the issues and how connected they may or not maybot be to military service. A former service member shrink, however, may have the past experiences to question some of these soldiers in need of help and place them on the right path to recovery.
I was an officer, recently diagnosed as bipolar. I went to my chain of command, from O-3 to O-5 and they showed a lot of concern while I was speaking to them. I handed them notes from my therapist and psychiatrist and a list of medications along with limitations and side-effects. They didn’t listen, I dehydrated and had a psychotic break from a toxic level of one of my meds. Some self-injury was involved and I woke up a couple days later in ICU. My military career ended and my dumb ass waved VA benefits.
Jmass that sounds like an awful situation you had to go through. However, as far as the military is concerned I do not what could have been done. The only option would have been to get you out somehow. I have dealt with alot of people with bi-polar disorder and unfortunately for you i think the military is the worst job to have for someone with that disorder.Just my curious nature, how did you get dehydrated? training or just randomly. Almost all mental illness drugs work so strangely, they are really a strange class of drugs, did you get discharged? honorably?
@4…even though it will likely be an @ss pain to work the system, I would really encourage you to apply to the VA and/ or file a BCNR (board of corrections for naval records) or whatever your branch’s equivalent is. Diagnoses like bipolar rate a medical board. A good advocate or lawyer would be able to make a compelling argument that given your condition at the time, you may not have fully appreciated what you were doing when you signed away your VA rights (which to be honest, doesn’t sound quite right to me in and of itself and I wonder if you signed away a PEB instead).
I have always thought that the job of the uniformed shrink is as much to save the command from themselves as it is to be an advocate for the patient. In most cases I’ve been in, these two things end up being one in the same. Right or wrong, commands tend to listen to the providers in uniformed more attentively. Personally, I’ve always thought that places a greater responsibility on those providers to be assertive with commands and tell them how it is, to include going as far above the command’s head as is necessary to ensure that the right thing gets done. Granted, the job is much easier when you have supportive brass backing your play but it doesn’t eliminate the responsibility from the individual doc to do the right thing.
And as an aside, I think the program outlined above is a great idea. Nothing is more powerful than vets looking out for one another.