Healing Combat Trauma

Resources on Military Sexual Trauma: VetWow's Short Podcasts for Survivors, Friends and Family

Military Sexual Trauma, like PTSD another "invisible wound," is unfortunately more prevalent in the military than we would want to believe, though little discussed officially. It's different though when combatants get together who have experienced it. Among female servicemembers in particular, it is all too often a common experience; and whether among male or female servicemembers, the after-effects can be devastating. 

At its root, it is a betrayal of trust -- the military is designed to be a "family unit," so assault within this context can feel to survivors like incest -- and many survivors describe the hazing by their command as more difficult in its own way than the actual assault (ugh). Civilians in particular have a hard time wrapping their brains around how prevalent the problem is, how light or nonexistent the penalties (despite official "policies" to the contrary), and how devastating the aftermath is for those who suffer -- who then have to navigate an often-byzantine system of claims and benefits for their care. (Fortunately, MST survivors are able to access VA in a very direct manner...it's worth watching Susan's discussion, linked here, to understand how.) Family and friends -- who may find themselves supporting the survivor -- also need education about how best to offer support, in ways that are constructive and not counter-productive or further traumatizing.

We've written about military sexual assault on the site before, here. "Military sexual trauma (MST) is the term that the Department of Veterans Affairs uses to refer to sexual assault or repeated, unsolicited, threatening acts of sexual harassment –- that occurred while the veteran was in the military."

Susan Avila-Smith, a former Army linguist who suffered her own sexual assault in the military, is now a formidable MST/PTSD advocate and the founder of VetWow, where she advocates for others who have experienced MST and PTSD, and focuses on resolving their claims. A settled claim can provide the MST survivor with financial independence, which is important also in healing. Avila-Smith does not charge for her services, though she does encourage the male and female survivors to pay this service forward in their own lives, once they have stabilized enough to do so, by contributing to others in various ways. 

Recently I got a chance to work with Avila-Smith on creating a "channel" on YouTube for short, one to three minute podcasts about various aspects of MST for survivors, their families and friends, their advocates and the media. The videos/podcasts are organized into the following categories. Please watch them, and share them with your friends and colleagues. Particularly let those in the military (active duty) and veterans know about this resource. As Avila-Smith herself says, it's important to get the word out about military sexual trauma, because "you can't tell by looking at someone" if they've ever been sexually assaulted. For those who have been, these resources can be tremendously reassuring, constructive and helpful.

For MST survivors:

• Symptoms of MST in Veterans;
  
• What PTSD Feels Like to the MST Survivor;
  
• Difference between "Traumatic Stress Syndrome" and "Post-Traumatic Stress" Syndrome; 
  
• For the MST Survivor: Thoughts of Death and Self-Harm;
  
• Interested in Becoming an MST Advocate?;
  
• For Female MST Survivors, Hoarding Can Be Typical;
  
• For MST Survivors: "Hitting the Wall";
  
• For the MST Survivor: Working with Your Therapist Effectively;
  
• For the MST Survivor: Working with the Veterans Service Officer ("VSO") Effectively;
  
• For the MST Survivor: Achieving Satisfaction with Your Advocate;
  
• MST Survivor May Fit VA's Expanded Definition of "Homeless";
  
• For the MST Survivor: Learn to “Pay it Forward";
  

For male survivors of MST:

• For Male Survivors of MST;
  

Self-care and healing resources:

• For the MST Survivor: Good Self-Care Habits;
  
• Alternative Therapies for PTSD.;
  

For friends and family:

• Welcome Friends and Family!; 
  
• What PTSD Feels Like to the MST Survivor;
  
• For Friends and Family: When an MST Survivor Wants to Share Their Story with You;
  
• For Friends and Family: How to Help and How Not to Help an MST Survivor;
  
• When the MST Soldier Comes Home: Best Practices for a Good Outcome;
  

For active duty:

• Why Active Duty Advocacy is So Important;
  
• Active Duty / Filing a Restricted Report;
  
• Active Duty / Filing an Unrestricted Report;
  
• Filing an Unrestricted Report: What GENERALLY happens;
  
• Filing an Unrestricted Report: What SHOULD happen;
  
• Unrestricted Reports: the Danger of "The McDowell Checklist";
  
• For Active Duty: More on the Administrative Discharge;
  

Dealing with the VA:

• Accessing VA Services as an MST Survivor;
  
• Guide to Navigating the VA;
  
• When You Get a Letter from the VA;

Filing and winning a claim:

• Why Filing the Claim Quickly is in the Veteran's Best Interest;
  
• How to File a Claim for Military Sexual Trauma: The Key Items Needed in Your VA Claim File;
• Winning an MST Claim, Part I;
• Winning an MST Claim, Part II: How Long It Takes, Strategies for Self-Care While You Wait, etc.;

For advocates:

• Interested in Becoming an MST Advocate?;
  

For prospective donors:

• For Prospective Donors;
  

For the media:

• For the Media: When You Want to Interview an MST Survivor;
  
• For Media Who Want to Interview MST Survivors and Veterans;
  

General interest:                                                   

• Why MST is a Problem and Why the Solutions Don't Work;
  
• Explaining a Few of the Myths Surrounding Military Sexual Trauma;
  
• Which is Worse for the MST Survivor: The Rape or the Command?;
  
• Why the Current System Needs an Overhaul;
  
• Strange Facts about MST and the VA: Offenders and Victims;
  
• What I Envision in a Perfect Future: Blue Sky Thinking on MST;
  

Editor's note: For more resources about military sexual trauma, particularly filing and winning a VA claim, head for Susan Avila-Smith's website, VetWow; to support (i.e., donate to) those who advocate for victims of military sexual trauma, go to PackParachute; or to follow the legislative progress on this issue, go to Service Women's Action Network for information on the legislative angle. Remember, this is a problem that affects both men and women in the military. And most of all, watch the videos linked above -- and share those with family, friends and veterans' advocates. Thank you.

Week-long Clinical Training Program at the National Center for PTSD

Just back from the week-long and yes, truly fabulous, "clinical training program" at the National Center for PTSD, held on the campus of the VA in Menlo Park, CA. Here's a link to the program. It could not have been better.

We learned so much -- classes ran from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. daily, and the stack of handouts, double-sided, ran to 14 lbs. of material. One of the best parts of the program, and there were so many, was the opportunity to observe the men's inpatient residential treatment program for PTSD. That was outstanding. It was hard not to want to follow those guys' progress through the rest of the 60-90 day program. They were working hard at getting better, and it was inspiring.

There'll be more to share about the experiences in the program and what we learned as time goes by, but for right now I just wanted to mention it. It was outstanding...

"Yoga for the Nervous System: Healing Anxiety, Insomnia and PTSD"

The above title -- promising, no?! let's hope it also delivers -- is the name of a "weekend intensive" class being given in mid-November at the famous Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in the Berkshires (Western Massachusetts, close to the New York border.)  Information about the class is linked here.

(For more links to blog posts where we've talked about yoga and PTSD, click here. For more about the larger topic of mind-body medicine, which includes yoga, click here. For more on a yet still more comprehensive topic, PTSD and Complementary and Alternative Medicine, which includes mind-body medicine, click here.)

According to the Kripalu Center's brochure:

"Unlock the power of your mind-body network to relax your physical body, calm your mind, and quiet your nervous system.  Conditions such as anxiety, insomnia and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) involve hyperarousal of the nervous system along with the mental, emotional and physical [aspects of our] bodies.  If this activation becomes chronic, the neuro-emotional patterns that result can compromise your physical health, emotional well-being, and creative potential.

Fortunately, the neural pathways to relaxation and calm exist in each one of us.  Those pathways simply need to be discovered and activated repeatedly to alter the state of the nervous system.

This transformative weekend intensive will include:

• Elemental Yoga, a transformative, therapeutic, alignment-based, slow vinyasa practice;
• Meditation;
• Restorative yoga; and
• Pranayama (breathing) exercises designed to balance the nervous system and emotional [aspects of the] body;

Psychologist and yoga therapist Bo Forbes will draw from her extensive experience in clinical psychology and mind-body therapeutics to help you learn to activate the neural pathway[s] to relaxation and catalyze the emergence of your extraordinary inner potential.

About Bo Forbes:
Bo Forbes, PsyD, E-RYT500, is a leading clinical psychologist, yoga teacher, and yoga therapist in the Boston area.  She is the founder of Elemental Yoga, director of the Center for Integrative Yoga Therapeutics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a contributing writer for Yoga Journal and Body & Soul magazines. 

(There's also an interesting interview with Bo Forbes on the topic of "Narrowing the Gap between Insight and Change: Yoga, Psychotherapy and the Body," linked here.

NOTE: The class says it is for those with "some yoga experience" as a pre-requisite.

Editor's note: For general yoga instructional videos, or yoga for stress videos, see thefollowing, mentioned in the sidebar (column to the left): Gaiam: Yoga For Beginners; Gaiam: Yoga for Stress Relief (With The Dalai Lama); Gaiam: AM/PM Yoga For Beginners (with The Dalai Lama & 10 Routines); and Yoga Journal: Yoga Journal's Yoga for Stress With Dr. Baxter Bell.

Heroes at Home: Emory University Research Project on PTSD

[Editor's note: If this post is a little bit mystifying, it's only because the specifics of this project are a little unclear.]

The Emory Center for Myth and Ritual in American Life ("MARIAL") near Atlanta, Georgia, has a research project underway called Heroes at Home?: Experiences of Combat Trauma among Returning Veterans and Their Families

According to the website,

This research uses a combination of ethnographic and epidemiological methods to consider lived experiences of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among Anglo-American, Mexican-American, and African-American male veterans of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. F ieldwork in San Antonio, Texas will explore how PTSD-diagnosed male veterans and their families understand and respond to trauma-related mental illness, as well as how PTSD illness experiences are shaped by individual and family members’ met and unmet expectations of veterans’ military service and performance of adult male roles within the family, particularly as related to work and economic providership. Interviews and participant observation conducted in clinical, family, and community settings will consider how veterans and their families situate lived experiences of PTSD, combat trauma, and personal and family well-being in the context of lay and clinical ethnopsychiatries around PTSD, expectations and experiences of military service in the “War on Terror,” and cultural norms for successfully functioning as an adult male. Findings will provide insight into individual- and family-level negotiations around illness, work, and gender roles; the negotiation of explanatory models of illness within pluralist cultural settings; and the ways in which cultural representations of war and PTSD are adopted, resisted, and lived out by a multiethnic group of participants.

By examining how patterns of work and socioeconomic status shape the experience of individuals and families dealing with combat-related PTSD, this research contributes to research on working families already ongoing at the MARIAL Center. The planned study will elaborate a multifaceted and diachronic view of how work is done and made sense of within families whose expectations and practices have been shaped by past military work, who have suffered the disruptions of long-term deployment, and whose well-being remains enduringly altered as a result.

Erin Finley, from the Department of Anthropology at Emory University, seems to be conducting the  research study.  Her contact information is available on the website, linked here.

Blogged Reports from Brown Conference

For those of you who like me are crying salty tears about missing what sounds like it was a stupendous conference at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island over the weekend, here are a couple of first-person reports from the same blogger about what the conference was like to attend. It really sounds fantastic.  I still wish I'd been able to go.  (Sigh.)  (The conference was on first person narratives coming back from the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, featuring many of the authors who wrote them, as well as interested others.)

First person report about the events of the first day; first person report about the events of the second day.  (Referencing those blog posts here does not imply an endorsement of the rest of the blog's contents -- I'm particularly interested in, as I hope you would be, the impressions from going to that conference itself.)

-----

If you've never seen "The War Tapes," by Deborah Scranton, one of the featured speakers at the conference, now might be a good time to try to find it on DVD.  Scranton is a filmmaker who put video cameras in the hands of various New Hampshire National Guard members, as the war in Iraq was beginning, and asked them to record what they saw, with the permission of their superiors.  What came back was some interesting footage, which she put together into a documentary that covers how three "regular guys" go to Iraq and get changed by the experience.  I saw the film at one of its first screenings on Cape Cod last year, met one of the featured participants, Sgt. Steve Pink, and really was impressed.  Apparently Scranton was a live wire at the conference, and one of it's most interesting participants.  (Here's a link to Scranton's blog, which includes a link to buying the DVD.) (The movie has since gone on to win a number of awards, including "Best Documentary," Tribeca Film Festival, and "Best International Documentary," BritDoc Festival.)