Post-traumatic Stress Disorder Progress

By Scott R. Gourley - December 28, 2015

Maj. Rudolph Vaca, an Army Reserve operations officer with the 416th Theater Engineer Command, marches alongside approximately 450 military veterans, service members, and supporters during a 22-mile rucksack march on May 22, 2015, just days before Memorial Day, to honor military men and women who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder or have committed suicide. This march was the Honor the Fallen Ruck March, Illinois. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. 1st Class Michel Sauret

Other VA PTSD initiatives include avatar-based apps, like Kognito Interactive’s 2011 Family of Heroes or 2014 Together Strong, or applications of the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies’ Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy.

Additionally, several VA organizations cooperated to create PTSD Coach, a mobile app that provides basic information about PTSD and the VA, allowing for a private self-assessment, and identifying how to get different types of help if desired.

Kudler also highlighted online technologies incorporated into national public awareness campaigns like Make the Connection, on which actual veterans offer candid personal testimonials “for people who aren’t sure if they have a problem or if they should do anything about the problem they think they have.”

“Both VA and DOD assets are there to provide that help,”Kudler concluded. “And that help is effective. So we encourage people to ask good questions and seek good answers.”

AboutFace is yet another VA-developed online tool that utilizes treatment testimonials to educate veterans and help them decide initial courses of action.

Other successful outreach efforts include 300 community-based Vet Centers and 80 Mobile Vet Centers that can respond to unique needs nationwide.

Across the myriad programs, Kudler was quick to cite the importance of cooperation between VA’s PTSD efforts and the work of other government organizations.

As an example, he offered, “Even though technically TBI is a rehab issue and not a psychiatry issue, we have many experts. There is a huge psychology component as well as a psychiatry component in TBI and we work very closely with VA and DOD TBI experts. That’s an area with tremendous overlap.”

Future Challenges

In his November 2014 Senate testimony, Kudler included the anticipation that “VA’s requirements for providing mental health care will continue to grow for a decade or more after current operational missions have come to an end.”

Today he sees two major challenges in that future vision. The first involves getting the broader health care community to coordinate care with the VA. The second involves providing a national level of what he called “basic mental health literacy.”

“In other words, people don’t always have words to describe a mental health issue and wouldn’t know where to go if they had a mental health issue,” he said. “Providing basic mental health literacy in America is foundational to having an effective VA and military mental health system.”

Emphasizing that “most people coming through military service, including deployments, will not develop a mental health diagnosis,” he added, “Everyone involved in the deployment cycle and everyone transitioning between military and civilian life faces significant stress, as do their families – even if it’s ‘good stress,’ like new babies, new jobs, new opportunities, or moves to new communities. But it’s significant stress. And sometimes this will require help from somebody who knows how to help.

“Both VA and DOD assets are there to provide that help,” he concluded. “And that help is effective. So we encourage people to ask good questions and seek good answers.”

This article was first published in The Year of Veterans Affairs and Military Medicine.