NPR has a wonderful story today on the effects of combat trauma on caregivers. They profile a chaplain who had a hard time with what he saw and experienced in combat, who's back in the U.S. recovering, as an outpatient at Walter Reed. The article profiles the chaplain's whole blended, military family, and describes how they all are coping, to varying degrees, with the trauma of war. The article also quotes our fave Jonathan Shay, M.D., Ph.D. And it makes the point that calling PTSD a "mental illness" is just another stigma that burdens the overall experience. Combat stress, in a caregiver, is a secondary traumatic stress injury. Worth thinking about...
On the same topic, the Boston Globe also has an article today about another aspect of the same topic. The Globe article is called "Back Home, A Struggle to Reconnect," and subtitled, "Medical reservists return, changed indelibly by war." It profiles four of the 450 members of the 399th Combat Support Hospital, a Massachusetts-based Army Reserve battalion made up of citizen soldiers who normally serve a weekend every month. Says the Globe, "In 2006, the 399th was mobilized for a year of full-time duty in Iraq, where the medics often came under mortar and rocket fire as they treated more than 30,000 US and Iraqi forces, contractors, civilians, and detainees." The battalion returned home on October 1st, and like the men of the 1st Battalion, 25th Marine regiment profiled by the Globe earlier, some, as expected, have had trouble readjusting to life after war. As the Globe aptly said about those troops, "those who came home have struggled to come to terms with the fact that 11 did not; that 68 others suffered combat wounds; and that many more were hit with injuries less visible but with long-term effects..."
Editor's Note: For more coverage on New England's own, click here and here. For more blog entries about caring for the caregivers and compassion fatigue, click here.
