Healing warriors

Greenleaf treats soldiers for post-traumatic stress syndrome

By Dean Poling

VALDOSTA — People think of treating post-traumatic stress disorder as helping soldiers cope with the horrors of past combat while assimilating into a civilian culture.

That’s part of the treatment, but the PTSD counseling team at Greenleaf must balance a delicate situation. They must help these soldiers deal with the memories and reacquaint themselves with the world of “back home” all the while remembering that most of these warriors will have to return to combat in Iraq or Afghanistan.

“We have to help them deal with the issues of being home without taking the edge off,” says Greenleaf therapist Bethany Dollar, “because they’re going back to combat.”

“That’s where we have to be careful,” says fellow therapist Erskin Maynard. “They’re here now but they have to go back. They have to deal with being home but they can’t lose that aggressiveness, either. They will need it when they are called back.”

Maynard, a Vietnam veteran, and Dallas Bennett, a Greenleaf substance-abuse counselor and a veteran Marine, say that soldiers in Vietnam served a tour of duty and came home. The Vietnam veteran could opt to serve another tour in country. Many World War II veterans served the duration of their time in the war.

Current soldiers may serve a year-long tour, then come home for several months, then return for another tour. Military personnel are being rotated in and out, back and forth, between a life at home and a life on the front.

The situation creates a new set of circumstances. Today’s soldier may be haunted by the past, anxious in the present, and worried about the future.

Given the close proximity, Greenleaf has worked with Moody Air Force Base personnel for many years. In the fall of 2008, Greenleaf began treating personnel from other bases. The number of bases referring personnel to Greenleaf has increased ever since. Greenleaf even received calls from Fort Hood following the mass shooting at that base.

Maynard, Dollar and Bennett work as a team. The Greenleaf team views its work as duty to country, to help these soldiers better serve their units while re-adjusting to the responsibilities and expectations of families and the home front.

One soldier insisted that Dollar accept his Bronze Star as a gift, a thanks for helping him, a memento to inspire her to keep helping soldiers.

“I think about what they’ve been through and what they are dealing with and their ages, 19, 21, 22, 23 years old, and I think that’s my kid,” says Maynard, a one-time New Yorker who keeps a photograph of the Twin Tower smoke plumes of Sept. 11 framed in his office.

“... And this is why they are there,” he says, picking up the photograph. “We were attacked. We’re fighting two wars on two fronts. People at home talk about should we spend the money, or don’t even remember what happened or why we’re fighting. And these guys are out there everyday, doing their job everyday, defending our country so we can go on arguing about the cost, or just go on doing what we’re doing.”

Counseling Iraq and Afghanistan veterans has opened the Greenleaf team’s eyes to what these young men and women are facing overseas, while they try opening the veterans’ eyes to better ways to cope with living in two overlapping worlds.

They counsel special forces, airmen, sailors, soldiers, Marines, Guardsmen and Reserves, various ranks, men and women, most young from their late teens to early 20s though some are older.

Some deal solely with the effects of PTSD: Anger, depression, coping with the move from a world of military black-and-white to the grays of civilian and family cultures.

They have seen children blown to pieces then see their own children throw a tantrum because a video game doesn’t work.

A veteran sleeps in a family bed lost in a dream of combat, only to awake and discover he has his wife in a death grip.

Others come to Greenleaf with more complex symptoms of drug and alcohol abuse stemming from post-traumatic stress disorder. They drink or do drugs, take pills or huff aerosols, as coping mechanisms from the effects of combat overseas and fighting the domestic battles on the homefront.

They have lived with the threat of death to return home in tough economic times with the threat of overdue bills. They have faced an armed enemy overseas wishing to kill them and they face an angry wife at home who insists the veteran doesn’t understand what she’s been through in his absence.

Some suffer simply from the knowledge they came home while comrades did not.

All of these things, and so many more, all with the knowledge just under the surface, just waiting on the calendar, that they will have to go back. They will have to go back to Iraq or Afghanistan, then they will come home again and adjust once more.

They deal with the staggering loss of faith in mankind, Dollar says.

Maynard, Bennett and Dollar try providing tools to help them cope with both worlds. They practice stress-relieving exercises. Military personnel share experiences. They get things out in the open.

They can make comparisons in group sessions, which combine military personnel with civilians at Greenleaf. Young soldiers can see the toll alcohol and drugs have taken on an older patient and realize that it is not where they want their lives to go. Meanwhile, some civilian patients realize their problems are inconsequential compared to those faced by the military patient.

Maybe, most importantly, Greenleaf gives them a break from both worlds.

The military patients work at Greenleaf, but there are no military orders. No one telling them when to get up or where to go. When not in therapy, the veterans can swim, play ball, work out, read, watch television, socialize. It also gives them a break from family expectations of getting up with a crying baby, or balancing the checkbook, or having to explain themselves to loved ones.

“It gives them a break,” Maynard says. “They learn it’s OK to laugh and cry and get some help with their mental health.”

The idea that it’s OK to get some mental-health help has been the biggest cause for the increase in Greenleaf’s treatment of soldiers. The military has changed its attitude toward mental-health and the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Military bases are reaching out to treatment facilities such as Greenleaf in Valdosta and Hopes and Dreams Riding Facility in Quitman. Military units are forming their own Wounded Warrior and Warrior Transition programs.

“Now, they can get help without there being a stigma,” Maynard says. “They can continue in their careers. They can go back overseas. And they can come home and get help.”

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