From Battlefield to Classroom
Written by Mark Fitzgerald
MAE 2010 Volume: 5 Issue: 3 (April)
In the wake of conflicts abroad, more and more veterans are seeking help for PTSD throughout the country. According to the American Council on Education, U.S. colleges and universities are now educating about two million military veterans who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Often we combat veterans know something is different but do not know what that something is,” observed Michael Orban, a Vietnam veteran and the author of Souled Out: A Memoir of War and Inner Peace, in an online discussion. “We isolate, deny, self-medicate and hide from the symptoms because they are not expected or understood and can be frightening to one’s very sense of sanity. Add to this that a combat veteran leaves the battlefield and returns to a world where no one else can relate to or understand the events that caused the PTSD, and a natural isolation from common experience begins to be felt. We feel lonely in our thoughts and withdraw from the rest of the world. Fear of losing one’s mind, going insane, is the result of not understanding what one is suffering from.”
RECOGNIZING THE SIGNS
Symptoms of PTSD may include reliving trauma (such as military combat, natural disasters, terrorist incidents and other distressing experiences), avoiding stimuli that might call back the trauma (for example, people or places) and feeling on guard, irritable, or startling easily.
“I think many soldiers who have experienced war are reluctant to seek any kind of help,” said James DiTulio, the director of Western Illinois University’s counseling center. “Some of the training they’ve received to be able to manage their feelings in a strong way makes sense on a battlefield, but not necessarily back home. You know you can’t just turn your emotions on and off like a switch.”
Reintegration into society and transitioning into campus life can be frustrating and challenging for veterans, especially if they’ve served in an active war zone. According to the Veterans Affairs National Center for PTSD, about 30 percent of the men and women who served in Vietnam experience the disorder. More than 50 percent of all male Vietnam veterans and nearly half of all female Vietnam veterans have experienced clinically serious stress reaction symptoms.
COMING FORWARD
“In order to detect PTSD, the former soldier and student needs to be willing to openly talk about what’s going on and admit what they’re experiencing,” added DiTulio. “Once that happens, then each person’s ability to cope with the trauma, or each person’s resiliency, seems to vary.”
It is not uncommon for two servicemembers who have experienced the same traumatic event to display different symptoms of PTSD and symptoms with differing degrees of severity. “We take a look at each person individually and evaluate the symptoms and try to figure out how disruptive it is,” explained DiTulio. “So if they’re having nightmares, how frequent is it? Are they awakened in the middle of the night? We also look for triggers. For some, it might be a visual aspect, for others it might be a sense of smell or even a feel.”
Awareness of the symptoms of PTSD goes a long way in facilitating therapy. Some vets may not even be aware they have the disorder until they begin talking to a counselor or peer about something that happened that seems unrelated. “They might just think they freaked out for some reason,” said DiTulio. “But once they start talking to us, we might discover that it’s because they walked by the kitchen and smelled something cooking that reminded them of a certain food they smelled just before a bomb went off. So there are those kinds of linking triggers that we try to look for.”
COPING WITH SYMPTOMS
Once these symptoms are disclosed, a counselor devises an individual plan of how to help the student achieve some symptom relief. “Depending on the case, we might refer them to a psychiatrist so they can get a medical opinion,” noted DiTulio. “Certainly we will encourage them to seek the services of the VA, but that could be a good distance from campus. We’ve found that vets seeking help usually will start with local resources. Hopefully campus support people can make a referral so they can get more help if needed.”
For individuals who have experienced a traumatic event, about 8 percent of men and 20 percent of women develop the disorder, according to the Veterans Affairs National Center for PTSD. Moreover, about 30 percent of these individuals develop a chronic form of it that continues on throughout their lifetime.
“I don’t think there’s that much data collection on vets with mental health issues in higher education, but I’m hearing a lot these days about vets with PTSD,” said Peter Schmidt, a senior associate dean for student success and retention at Edmonds Community College. “We are seeing a greater influx of vets across the country seeking help, and there’s therefore a larger need for support. But the truth is many of our higher education clinicians are not trained or well-prepared to work and understand veteran culture and also know about VA resources and have a good relationship to practitioners in the VA. So there is a real need for more resources and training.”
PEER SUPPORT
The VA estimates that the number of vets experiencing PTSD from the Gulf War is as high as 10 percent. Estimates from the war in Afghanistan are between 6 percent and 11 percent, while current approximations of PTSD for military personnel who served in Iraq range from 12 percent to 20 percent.
“I’ve run into several guys on campus who have pretty severe symptoms,” acknowledged Schmidt. “The Plains Indians would never have welcomed their warriors back to their tribe after battle before they had gone off in a way and processed what that experience was all about. But we don’t have any rituals like that in our culture. What we’ve got is veterans who are coming into higher education campuses who have never been encouraged to process or work through their experiences.”
Veteran to veteran dialogue and peer to peer interaction can be particularly therapeutic in regard to PTSD cases. “Sometimes vets just have to tell their story to someone who can identify with them,” Schmidt pointed out. “Higher education institutions must offer a space for that healing to take place, and several offices helping are better than just one. So if you have a vets’ resource center, a vets’ resource team, if you’ve advertised your disabilities services office and your counseling center and you have a place you can bring in people from the VFW and American Legion, then I think your military students are going to have a much better chance at transitioning and succeeding in the classroom.” ♦