thedrifter
06-25-07, 06:24 AM
Last Updated: 6:56 am | Monday, June 25, 2007
Healing war-wounded minds
Help nearby for post-traumatic stress disorder
BY HOWARD WILKINSON | HWILKINSON@ENQUIRER.COM
There is no good place to live with the aftermath of war. But if you are an Iraq veteran like Steve Griffith of Sycamore Township, struggling to deal with the emotional upheaval of post-traumatic stress disorder, there are worse places to be than Cincinnati.
"There are people here who can help," said the 29-year-old Griffith, a former Marine and veteran of war in both Afghanistan and Iraq. "But you have to be willing to be helped. You have to recognize your problem."
Returning veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan have more avenues for help through the Veterans Affairs health administration than veterans in most areas of country. Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky is home to:
One of only a handful of clinics among the 153 VA medical center that has a clinic specifically for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, with a full-time staff and full-time hours;
An outpatient and residential PTSD and Anxiety Disorder Clinic at the VA's Fort Thomas facility - with a PTSD program that is being copied at VA medical centers around the country,
The only residential PTSD program for women veterans in the Midwest and Plains states. Women live at the Fort Thomas center for seven weeks.
"If you are returning veteran within a 150-mile radius of the Cincinnati VA Medical Center, you have a lot of options for getting help," said Todd Sledge, the Cincinnati VA Medical Center's public affairs officer and a former PTSD counselor himself.
But it is up to the individual veteran to make the decision to seek help. For many, like Griffith, that process takes a long time.
Griffith came home from Iraq in the summer of 2003 with a wife, Tammy, about to bear their first child. It took nearly two years before Griffith looked himself dead in the eye and admitted that he needed help - two solid years of feelings of guilt, explosions of anger, and a growing alienation from those who cared about him most and the world at large.
It took a tragedy involving his fellow Marines to give him the final push to get help. It was August 2004 and the Marines of Columbus-based Lima Company lost 13 Marines in one bloody day.
"I remember sitting there watching this on TV and I burst out crying," Griffith said. "I couldn't stop. I went outside and had a cigarette, came back inside and went to bed. I was still crying.
"Tammy said, 'What's wrong with you?' I said, 'I don't know; I don't know what's wrong with me. But I am going to find out.' "
For Griffith, the help came through the VA Medical Center's then-fledgling clinic set up to deal with the needs - physical and emotional - of returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.
There he found a social worker named Karen Cutright - now the clinic's program manager. She counseled him and sent him to the Vet Center in Queensgate, which offers "readjustment counseling" for veterans - helping them find jobs, cope with mental problems, or solve family problems. His therapy continued in group sessions with other Iraq veterans, led by social worker David Roby, an Iraq war veteran.
"He kind of stumbled in here one day because someone had told him he needed to see Karen," said Cutright, a social worker whose husband was in the Army and whose father was a Marine. "I told him, 'I think you need me.' He said, 'Yes, I do need you.' And, with that, his recovery began."
20,000 CASES AND RISING
Griffith was one of more than 20,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who were seen for PTSD at VA Medical Centers and Vet Centers across the country through 2005; and the numbers will continue to grow. The National Center on PTSD estimates that 40 percent of those who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan are suffering now from PTSD or are likely to in the future.
In this region, many of them will end up walking through the doors of the PTSD and Anxiety Disorders Clinic at the Cincinnati VA's Fort Thomas Nursing Home, where they will find Kate Chard, a psychiatrist who runs the program.
In individual outpatient therapy or in a seven-week residential program, they will undergo a system of therapy devised specifically for military veterans by Chard and two of her colleagues, Patricia Resnick and Candice Morgan of the National Center for PTSD.
It is called "Cognitive Processing Therapy," and Chard and her colleagues have been traveling around the country teaching it to health care professionals at VA medical centers.
MANY STILL FROM VIETNAM WAR
Chard said that, as of early June, 103 Iraq/Afghanistan veterans had gone through the treatment program. After the therapy, 70 percent no longer met the criteria for PTSD, Chard said.
The majority of the clinic's patients, Chard said, are Vietnam veterans, and their numbers are increasing. Chard said she believes that as public awareness of PTSD among Iraq veterans increases, more Vietnam veterans are realizing that they, too, need help.
The theory behind the treatment, she said, is simple.
"It begins with understanding that there are two kinds of emotions that can come from a traumatic event - whether it is war, a natural disaster like Katrina or a tragedy like the 9/11 attacks," Chard said. "There are natural emotions and then there are what we call manufactured emotions."
Natural emotions flow naturally from any veteran of combat - fear when in danger, anger over being attacked, sadness when comrades are killed.
Manufactured emotions, Chard explained, are based not so much on the event itself but how the individual interprets it.
"All the feelings of guilt and self-blame that many veterans feel - the guilt of having survived when others didn't, blaming themselves for what they might have done in battle to save someone but didn't, these are not natural emotions," Chard said. "They are created. Natural emotions flow out of you. Manufactured emotions are like a fire in the fireplace. They stay within."
Cognitive Processing therapy, Chard said, is about learning to accept the natural emotions and adjust the manufactured ones so that they no longer cause the feelings of guilt and blame.
'WHY AM I STILL ALIVE?'
Griffith knows full well the burden of manufactured emotions.
At the root of his anger were feelings of guilt - a feeling that his fellow Marines were still fighting and dying in Iraq while he was safe at home.
"I thought, what's so special about me?" Griffith said. "Why am I still alive? Why did they die and I lived?
"I spent two years driving everyone around me crazy," said Griffith. "I was constantly irritable. The smallest thing would make me fly off the handle."
It was so bad, Griffith said, that his wife Tammy, who gave birth to their daughter Elyssa in 2003, "didn't know if she could have her child raised by somebody so messed up. That's how bad I was."
Once he found Cutright and began seeing Roby, he was on the road to getting better.
The group therapy sessions at the Vet Center, Griffith said, "did a world of good for me."
"I'm pretty well there now,'' Griffith said. "There are hiccups along the road. But I know now how to control what's inside me. I won't be walked on; and I won't have my family be walked on. But I can control my emotions."
And, as he has struggled to deal with his own problem, he has made a point of working to get other Iraq veterans the help they need, through his work with the Military Support Group and his Veterans of Foreign Wars post.
"My advice to anyone else who is going through this is simple - just get in there," Griffith said. "Deal with it now. Don't wait.
"And understand that it has to be a total commitment. I'm still dealing with issues and it's been two years since I went for help. You have to work on it constantly."
Ellie
Healing war-wounded minds
Help nearby for post-traumatic stress disorder
BY HOWARD WILKINSON | HWILKINSON@ENQUIRER.COM
There is no good place to live with the aftermath of war. But if you are an Iraq veteran like Steve Griffith of Sycamore Township, struggling to deal with the emotional upheaval of post-traumatic stress disorder, there are worse places to be than Cincinnati.
"There are people here who can help," said the 29-year-old Griffith, a former Marine and veteran of war in both Afghanistan and Iraq. "But you have to be willing to be helped. You have to recognize your problem."
Returning veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan have more avenues for help through the Veterans Affairs health administration than veterans in most areas of country. Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky is home to:
One of only a handful of clinics among the 153 VA medical center that has a clinic specifically for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, with a full-time staff and full-time hours;
An outpatient and residential PTSD and Anxiety Disorder Clinic at the VA's Fort Thomas facility - with a PTSD program that is being copied at VA medical centers around the country,
The only residential PTSD program for women veterans in the Midwest and Plains states. Women live at the Fort Thomas center for seven weeks.
"If you are returning veteran within a 150-mile radius of the Cincinnati VA Medical Center, you have a lot of options for getting help," said Todd Sledge, the Cincinnati VA Medical Center's public affairs officer and a former PTSD counselor himself.
But it is up to the individual veteran to make the decision to seek help. For many, like Griffith, that process takes a long time.
Griffith came home from Iraq in the summer of 2003 with a wife, Tammy, about to bear their first child. It took nearly two years before Griffith looked himself dead in the eye and admitted that he needed help - two solid years of feelings of guilt, explosions of anger, and a growing alienation from those who cared about him most and the world at large.
It took a tragedy involving his fellow Marines to give him the final push to get help. It was August 2004 and the Marines of Columbus-based Lima Company lost 13 Marines in one bloody day.
"I remember sitting there watching this on TV and I burst out crying," Griffith said. "I couldn't stop. I went outside and had a cigarette, came back inside and went to bed. I was still crying.
"Tammy said, 'What's wrong with you?' I said, 'I don't know; I don't know what's wrong with me. But I am going to find out.' "
For Griffith, the help came through the VA Medical Center's then-fledgling clinic set up to deal with the needs - physical and emotional - of returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.
There he found a social worker named Karen Cutright - now the clinic's program manager. She counseled him and sent him to the Vet Center in Queensgate, which offers "readjustment counseling" for veterans - helping them find jobs, cope with mental problems, or solve family problems. His therapy continued in group sessions with other Iraq veterans, led by social worker David Roby, an Iraq war veteran.
"He kind of stumbled in here one day because someone had told him he needed to see Karen," said Cutright, a social worker whose husband was in the Army and whose father was a Marine. "I told him, 'I think you need me.' He said, 'Yes, I do need you.' And, with that, his recovery began."
20,000 CASES AND RISING
Griffith was one of more than 20,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who were seen for PTSD at VA Medical Centers and Vet Centers across the country through 2005; and the numbers will continue to grow. The National Center on PTSD estimates that 40 percent of those who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan are suffering now from PTSD or are likely to in the future.
In this region, many of them will end up walking through the doors of the PTSD and Anxiety Disorders Clinic at the Cincinnati VA's Fort Thomas Nursing Home, where they will find Kate Chard, a psychiatrist who runs the program.
In individual outpatient therapy or in a seven-week residential program, they will undergo a system of therapy devised specifically for military veterans by Chard and two of her colleagues, Patricia Resnick and Candice Morgan of the National Center for PTSD.
It is called "Cognitive Processing Therapy," and Chard and her colleagues have been traveling around the country teaching it to health care professionals at VA medical centers.
MANY STILL FROM VIETNAM WAR
Chard said that, as of early June, 103 Iraq/Afghanistan veterans had gone through the treatment program. After the therapy, 70 percent no longer met the criteria for PTSD, Chard said.
The majority of the clinic's patients, Chard said, are Vietnam veterans, and their numbers are increasing. Chard said she believes that as public awareness of PTSD among Iraq veterans increases, more Vietnam veterans are realizing that they, too, need help.
The theory behind the treatment, she said, is simple.
"It begins with understanding that there are two kinds of emotions that can come from a traumatic event - whether it is war, a natural disaster like Katrina or a tragedy like the 9/11 attacks," Chard said. "There are natural emotions and then there are what we call manufactured emotions."
Natural emotions flow naturally from any veteran of combat - fear when in danger, anger over being attacked, sadness when comrades are killed.
Manufactured emotions, Chard explained, are based not so much on the event itself but how the individual interprets it.
"All the feelings of guilt and self-blame that many veterans feel - the guilt of having survived when others didn't, blaming themselves for what they might have done in battle to save someone but didn't, these are not natural emotions," Chard said. "They are created. Natural emotions flow out of you. Manufactured emotions are like a fire in the fireplace. They stay within."
Cognitive Processing therapy, Chard said, is about learning to accept the natural emotions and adjust the manufactured ones so that they no longer cause the feelings of guilt and blame.
'WHY AM I STILL ALIVE?'
Griffith knows full well the burden of manufactured emotions.
At the root of his anger were feelings of guilt - a feeling that his fellow Marines were still fighting and dying in Iraq while he was safe at home.
"I thought, what's so special about me?" Griffith said. "Why am I still alive? Why did they die and I lived?
"I spent two years driving everyone around me crazy," said Griffith. "I was constantly irritable. The smallest thing would make me fly off the handle."
It was so bad, Griffith said, that his wife Tammy, who gave birth to their daughter Elyssa in 2003, "didn't know if she could have her child raised by somebody so messed up. That's how bad I was."
Once he found Cutright and began seeing Roby, he was on the road to getting better.
The group therapy sessions at the Vet Center, Griffith said, "did a world of good for me."
"I'm pretty well there now,'' Griffith said. "There are hiccups along the road. But I know now how to control what's inside me. I won't be walked on; and I won't have my family be walked on. But I can control my emotions."
And, as he has struggled to deal with his own problem, he has made a point of working to get other Iraq veterans the help they need, through his work with the Military Support Group and his Veterans of Foreign Wars post.
"My advice to anyone else who is going through this is simple - just get in there," Griffith said. "Deal with it now. Don't wait.
"And understand that it has to be a total commitment. I'm still dealing with issues and it's been two years since I went for help. You have to work on it constantly."
Ellie