Combating P.T.S.D. and Preventing Suicides

by Jennifer Litz
Del Rio LIVE!

Pat Dugan was a reconnaissance marine corporal in Vietnam for 19 months, starting in 1966. He’s now a passionate voice for veteran help that resounds throughout West Texas. “I am seeing one of the biggest mushroom clouds,” Dugan says of times ahead for Iraq/Afghanistan veterans. “’... there are no front lines in this war. You can be [in a non-combat service] and get your butt blown off the road there with anyone else. Everyone’s sitting around waiting for an explosion to go off, and they send you back and back for more tours.”

When these vets do come back home—or in between myriad deployments—they’re still fighting—for their benefits. “In Del Rio, for example, we’ve got people with problems,” Dugan says. “And they have to travel 150 miles to get help [at a VA clinic]. And then when you get up there, I’m not being mean, but when you go up there and apply to get help, you get some VA muffin that’s not a veteran, and they put you through mental gymnastics like you wouldn’t believe. [Vets] don’t want to be humiliated and go through that process.”

This is a great article on a upcoming progressive treatment center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in Texas. Dugan points out 3 classic problems for getting treatment from traditional sources for PTSD...
1. fighting for benefits
2. traveling 150 miles to get help from a VA clinic
3. humiliation of the process
That's what I like about using EFT for this population. Once they know how to do it, they can start healing without the fighting, traveling or waiting. They can work with a practitioner or they can work on their own. They can use the Emotional Freedom Technique at home, on the road, sitting in traffic-anywhere. They can find a buddy to do it with. And if they can't do it on their own-family members, friends and spouses can do it with them. How many therapies can you say that about?

Getting help for PTSD related to the "combat environment" will no longer be a reason to deny security clearances

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, right, walked out of the Restoration & Resilience Center at Fort Bliss after touring it Thursday. (Rudy Gutierrez / El Paso Times)

Bracing against a blasting wind that reminded him of his native Kansas, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates spent a day at Fort Bliss touring a mental health center, watching a demonstration of the Army's newest technology, and meeting with soldiers and community leaders.

Gates had high praise for a Fort Bliss center designed to treat soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and return them to their units -- a center he said would serve as a prototype for the Army.

"They are doing some amazing things here in terms of helping soldiers who want to remain soldiers but who have been wounded with post-traumatic stress disorder," Gates said of the Restoration and Resilience Center. "I think it's an extraordinary program. ..... And one of the things that I will carry back to Washington with me is the question of whether we can replicate this at other posts around the country."

During a morning press conference in front of the center, Gates also formally announced a change in government policy he said would allow soldiers to seek help for PTSD without hurting their careers.

Getting help for PTSD related to the "combat environment" will no longer be a reason to deny security clearances, he said.

The Fort Bliss center is also looking at finding ways to help soldiers in combat zones deal with stress, Gates said, adding that those techniques "are clearly worth additional attention as well."

Changing the way the military and public in general feel about the stigma of PTSD is a HUGE step forward in admitting that this is a normal affliction of war. For the Secretary of Defense to announce this policy change says alot about the new climate of acceptance and healing. It's interesting that they are looking at therapies just as EFT is starting to become a mainstream solution to this type of disorder.