Mental illness comes home from war

In an effort to expand its reach beyond Society members, we are starting to regularly aggregate coverage about issues of trauma and violence:

• Kelly Kennedy, a 2008 Ochberg fellow, wrote a piece for USA Today on Monday about how anti-oxidant supplements can alleviate the symptoms of Gulf War Syndrome in a first step towards potentially curing the disease.

The somewhat mysterious syndrome affects a large number of Gulf War Veterans and is characterized by impaired memory and trouble concentrating, as well as ongoing headaches and fatigue, and is debated as to whether it’s caused by chemical agents during the war or stress.

But while a cure for Gulf War Syndrome is in development, mental illness is still prevalent in the military and because it’s not as apparent as a physical illness, it’s not as accepted.

• Ron Capps, a veteran whose blog posts have been featured in Time Magazine, said to admit to mental illness in the Army is a sign of “weakness.”

Moreover, Capps said many soldiers still feel that revealing any mental disorder will result in demotion.

Though he applauds military efforts to drop the D, and thus the “disorder,” from PTSD, Capps also wrote that he thinks the solution to reducing stigma about mental illness has to come from military leadership, where there is still mockery of the issue.

While soldiers deal with their own mental illness on the battlefield, military wives like Kristina Kaufmann are also emotionally affected by having a spouse in combat. She compares waiting for her husband to come home to the feeling of unease and worry you feel when seeing a cop car driving behind you. “Try having that feeling for ten years straight,” she said.

Kaufmann talked to NPR about the struggles she’s faced and the national Joining Forces program sponsored by Michelle Obama and Joe Biden:

In the show, she says for many military wives, the way of coping with their husbands at war is to think of the situation as a “new normal.” But Kaufmann disputes that phrase saying, “nothing about this is normal…It’s our new reality.”

Kaufmann also wrote an Op-Ed piece for The Washington Post in May 2009 about how she feels the army does little to support families dealing with the emotional trauma of having a loved one at war.

In her Post piece, like Capps, she says the answer is to have a more open military willing to listen to family input, provide more funding to community support groups and provide more support on a unit level.

And for those who aren’t part of a military family but still want to help, Kaufmann says in the radio show that Americans should research the issue and contact congress members.

“I would just say act,“ she said. “Be curious, reach out to us and we will reach out to you.”

-by Caitlin Huston