-
Looking Beyond PTSD: Are We Ready for Our Returning Heroes?
With an estimated 30,000 troops expected home from Afghanistan next month, the question that must be asked is: “Is the United States ready to accept these veterans back into society? Is it ready to help them reacclimate, re-socialize, and reintegrate?” The answer is not a simple yes or no. To...
-
Let’s Not Forget Older Veterans
Wilbur Cohen’s account of his post-war suffering in Arthur Kleinman’s wonderful book, What Really Matters1 begins with the following: “The war. It’s what happened to me in the war. I could never get over it. But I learned to live with it. Then all of a sudden on my sixtieth birthday it...
-
Online Toolkit Aims to Support Mental Health Providers Serving Veterans in the Community
The Department of Veterans Affairs has developed a new online Community Provider Toolkit (www.mentalhealth.va.gov/communityproviders) aimed at delivering support, therapeutic tools, and resources to community providers treating Veterans for mental health concerns. “Many Veterans seek mental...
-
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: The Person Within
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is not an inherent weakness in facing difficulty, nor is it a flaw in an individual’s personality, belief system, or values. The development and intensity of PTSD symptoms is concordant with the intensity and duration of the stressful event encountered. The...
-
Accessing the Untouchables: The Touch Points to Change
Effective treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) requires helping the trauma survivor find ways of acknowledging the role of past trauma in shaping his or her present experience and creating a vision for the future. Without a roadmap, this seemingly simple task may confound both...
-
Who We Are and How We Arrived at Today: Thirty Years of Treating People Who are Trauma Survivors
The WJCS Treatment Center for Trauma and Abuse (TCTA) has been in the forefront in providing mental health services to survivors of childhood sexual abuse, and other forms of trauma, in Westchester County for the past 30 years. Many of the individuals seen through this program have a diagnosis of...
-
Virtually Endless Possibilities in Trauma-Related Mental Health Care: A New NYC-DOHMH Training Initiative
We are at a turning point in the way we teach and learn medicine. In this information age, virtual technology-based training methods are becoming powerful learning tools for medical professionals, allowing them to learn and practice new skills, anytime, anywhere: from their homes, offices or from...
-
PTSD Among Veterans: A Signature Wound that Desperately Needs Healing
Veterans returning to civilian life from Iraq and Afghanistan are suffering from tragically high rates of mental and substance use disorders. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has become a hallmark injury among returning veterans, with a prevalence rate of approximately 20 percent—a rate two...
-
Survivors of Sexual Abuse: A Personal Journey
As part of the Personalized Recovery Oriented Services program at the Mental Health Association of Rockland County, Inc. that began earlier this year, a group named Survivors of Sexual Abuse-Women was launched. This closed group, led by Marian Rhein, LCSWR, was designed to serve the needs of women...
-
The Many Aspects of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that may develop in individuals who have experienced or witnessed an event that involves threatened death or serious injury, such as military combat, physical or sexual assault, natural disaster, terrorist attack, or motor vehicle...
