Last year around this time I had the pleasure of meeting Nathaniel Fick, author of the stupendous One Bullet Away: the Making of a Marine Officer. (Here he is at the Marine Ball at the Harvard Business School, where he is an MBA candidate, signing a few copies of his book.) Whenever I think of combat trauma, I think of how inspirational Fick's own words on the subject were. Writing in an article in the Boston Globe from August 28, 2005, entitled, "Coming Home...to What?" Fick wrote about the need to take veterans' psychological health seriously on their return from combat, possibly even mandating screening for combat trauma/PTSD. Said Fick at the time:
The screenings are only one step in the long process of reintegrating combat veterans, but mandating them would correct a dangerous oversight and better serve both veterans and the communities where they live. To have value, though, the screenings must be done right. Members of the active-duty forces are already subject to post-deployment mental evaluation, as are the National Guards of several states. These screenings often involve little more than filling out forms.
I remember slogging through my own mental health questionnaire after leaving Iraq, answering questions such as ''Did you ever feel that your life was in imminent danger?" Yes. Or ''Check all that apply: I saw the dead bodies of a) enemy combatants; b) American forces; c) civilians; d) all of the above." D.
Answers like mine should have prompted some sort of follow-up, but none came.
Psychological screenings in a vacuum are worse than a waste of time because they give a false sense that someone has been ''cleared." The main lesson of my experience is that the recovery process takes time, and healing only happens in community. Screenings can be gateways to those communities, both formal ones such as therapy groups and counseling sessions, and the informal networks of friends, neighbors, and colleagues with whom we live.
In a war whose burden is borne almost exclusively by the tiny minority in uniform and their families, veterans' care is one place we can all make a difference."
Nate Fick's book, One Bullet Away: the Making of a Marine Officer, is well worth reading, as is the rest of his writing. But most of all, I appreciate his inspirational stance on veterans issues -- that taking care of veterans really is the second half of the social contract, if the first half is sending them off to war on our behalf.
