Our men and women in uniform have been waging war in Afghanistan and Iraq for more than a decade, and their families have absorbed the impact of these conflicts--the multiple deployments, the physical and invisible injuries that result. Although our military men and women will leave Iraq by year's end, we must remember that for some of them the war will not be over. The trauma of war can linger, and the transition back home for some will not be easy.
Clearly, our nation wants to support this generation of warriors; yet we continue to see story after story indicating that returning troops--and their families--are suffering. Suicide among military personnel is higher than it has ever been, and according to some studies significant mental health issues affect as many as 35 percent of those who see combat. Unemployment rates are higher among returning veterans than among civilians, and this generation of veterans is becoming homeless at a much faster rate than their predecessors. In addition, military children are being seen for behavioral difficulties at record rates, and divorce within the military community is on the rise.
As we turn from the season of giving thanks to the festivities of the holidays, let us take a moment not only to honor those who serve and their families but also to consider how we might actively participate in the reintegration of these honorable men and women as they return to our communities.
GAH's Barbara Van Dahlen Testifies before Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs
On November 30, 2011, Dr. Barbara Van Dahlen testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs on the topic "VA Mental Health Care: Addressing Wait Times and Access to Care."
In her testimony Dr. Van Dahlen observed that the VA has worked hard to keep up with the changing landscape and the growing demands over the last decade as a result of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It has increased the number of Vet Centers across the country to 292 and has added 70 mobile vet centers in its effort to serve those who live in rural communities. It has expanded its call centers to help connect veterans in need with counseling services and launched the Veterans Crisis Line, which allows veterans and their families to call 24 hours a day, seven days a week for assistance.
Dr. Van Dahlen noted, however, that there remain significant gaps in care and that no organization, agency, or department can provide all of the education, support, and mental health treatment that every veteran and his or her family needs.She pointed to Give an Hour™ as one example of a community-based effort to complement the good work of the Department of Veterans Affairs. In fact, she said, there are considerable resources available within the civilian mental health community to returning troops, veterans, their families, and their communities.
Given that we are already seeing the consequences of the failure to identify and provide treatment to those OIF/OEF veterans in need as they come home from war,it is more helpful to those who serve and their families to see numerous endeavors coordinated on their behalf so that they understand that our country--not just our government--supports them and is committed to their health and well-being.
We are very grateful to all our volunteers and supporters who make Give an Hour™'s work possible. As we come to the end of the year, we would like to thank all of you. Please know that every volunteer hour is cherished and every dollar is carefully spent. Our administrative/ fundraising overhead costs are less than 10 percent.
If you would like to support the work of GAH and its volunteers, please donate. Any amount is welcome, and all amounts are tax deductible (our Tax ID: 61-1493378).
Click here to donate. Or mail a check to P.O. Box 5918, Bethesda, MD 20824.
Or, if you are a federal employee, contribute through the Combined Federal Campaign to CFC#65498. Please check with your employer for matching gift programs.
CivilianJobs.com Names GAH's Eric Rogersto Top 40 Under 40 Military Class of 2011
CivilianJobs.com, where America's military connects with civilian careers, recently announced those named to the Top 40 Under 40 Military Class of 2011. The honored individuals were selected by CivilianJobs.com's worldwide military base newspaper, Civilian Job News (CJN), and featured in the November/December Veterans Day issue of the CJN.
GAH's Executive Director, Eric Rogers, meets the Top 40 requirements and then some:
Has served in the U.S. armed forces
Is under 40 years of age
Has performed his military assignments in exemplary fashion
Anticipates an honorable discharge
CJN Publisher Bill Basnett said, "Throughout the year, CivilianJobs.com and Civilian Job News serve to connect employers with the military talent pool. Highlighting the best of the best on Veterans Day helps us remember why so many companies target military-experienced talent as an important part of their recruiting programs."
For more information on the Top 40 Under 40 Military program including a pictorial of the 2011 class, go to CivilianJobs.com/40U40.htm.
Earlier this month, GAH's Barbara Van Dahlen (on left) and Katherine Wilkins (not shown), visited Aetna's Hartford headquarters. The visit was sponsored by Louise Murphy (on right), head of Aetna Behavioral Health, and encouraged employees to learn more about the work of this organization and the volunteer opportunities that exist to support our military families. Thirty employees signed up for additional information about the organization.
Thanks to Aetna Behavioral Health's growing relationship with Give an Hour™, many volunteer opportunities are available for Aetna employees to support our troops by giving back to the military community.
"We are pleased to show our support for the Give an Hour™ organization and encourage all Aetna employees to participate in their wonderful volunteer program," says Ms. Murphy. "Aetna's values and commitment to the health and well-being of our members are closely aligned with Give an Hour™'s goals. Not only do Aetna employee clinicians from Behavioral Health, Employee Assistance Program, Health Care Management and other parts of the organization volunteer their time, but Aetna Behavioral Health actively recruits volunteers from our network of over 104,000 behavioral health providers across the United States--helping Give an Hour™ increase the number of practitioners providing free counseling to the military community."
Give an Hour™ greatly appreciates Aetna's many-faceted support of our mission and admires the company-wide enthusiasm for volunteering and helping out in communities all over the United States.
Provider Spotlight
Sage deBeixedon Breslin, Ph.D.
Dr. Sage deBeixedon Breslin has been serving the San Diego region as a practicing psychologist for over two decades, but it is only in the last four years that she has been treating service members as a Give an Hour™ provider. Still, with an average of "five to six pro bono clients," often young Marines from Camp Pendleton, at any one time, she is doing her part. The Healing Heart Center in Solana Beach, where she practices, offers an integrated medicine approach that Sage finds particularly useful with her diverse clientele. "I'd been working with Vietnam Vets for years," she says, "So I am lucky in that I was somewhat familiar with military culture when I signed up for Give an Hour™. One of the differences, however, is that some of my cases are young active duty Marines who are dealing with the distinct possibility of more tours in Iraq or Afghanistan." Sage donates between six and twenty hours to each of her Give an Hour™ cases. "I'd donate more but many of them leave me to deploy again," she says.
One of Sage's cases is a 24-year-old active duty Marine who has returned from deployment to Iraq in 2008 with severe PTSD. One of his duties was to search and defuse the area around his Forward Operating Base for buried landmines. He was routinely besieged by mortars and grenades both inside and outside "the wire." When he returned home to Pendleton and sought help, he was given a mild anti-depressant and told to "buck up and shut up." His wife had divorced him for another man, and he was barracked right smack in the middle of a highly active training facility that ran training exercises 24/7. By the time a battle buddy referred him to Give an Hour™ and ultimately Sage, "he was experiencing a lot of symptoms," she says. "He goes to bed with two guns and two knives but seldom sleeps. He has so many triggers . . . the sound of vehicles, the smell of fuel, the firing range, the munitions. Pendleton is on the beach, and the sight of sand makes him anxious so that his hyper-arousal goes through the roof. He has an extreme startle response and is constantly on edge. He can't be in the moment because he is continually scanning for the enemy." Besides giving him some tools to cope with his PTS, such as self-talk and meditation techniques, Sage has set two long-term goals for her patient. She is trying to get him into a Navy PTSD program and urging him to act upon his own desire for a discharge. "We'll see," she says. "But no matter what happens I feel like I'm making a difference. I know we professionals need to fill our hours with paid clients, particularly in a recession, but if we have the opportunity to be a part of something as important as Give an Hour™, we should go for it. The benefits of giving back are incalculable."
Give an Hour™ Hires Jennifer Taylor as Military Outreach Officer
Jennifer brings her professional experience as a facilitator and consultant in nonprofit administration and her personal experiences as a long serving military spouse to the Give an Hour™ mission and the Community Blueprint Network.
Sought after as a vibrant manager of change in organizations, Jennifer has specialized in facilitating organizational restructuring; guiding strategic planning, board, and staff development; fundraising; cultural tourism; community arts development; and technology planning. Her clients have included local arts agencies, visual and performing arts organizations, social service agencies, chambers of commerce, professional associations, private educational institutions, and museums.
She has served as a presenter and panelist for the Association for Research for Nonprofit Organization and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA), Public Administration Theory Network (PATNet), International Research Society for Public Management (IRSPM), Southeast Conference on Public Administration (SeCOPA), Texas Nonprofit Theatres Alliance (TNT), Small Business Development Center (SBA), National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and the Idaho Commission on the Arts (ICA).
Currently, a Doctoral Candidate in Public Administration and Urban Policy at Old Dominion University in Virginia, she earned an M.A. in Public Policy and Administration, Arts, from The Ohio State University and a B.A. in Art History from the University of South Carolina and is a member of the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP), ARNOVA, PATNet, and ASPA.
She, her husband, Asa, and their three children, Amelia, Wyatt, and Stella, reside in Norfolk, Virginia, where they enjoy sailing, renovating their mid-century modern home, and going to airshows.
North American Association of Christians in Social Work
For more than 60 years, the NACSW has been committed to equipping Christians in social work to ethically integrate Christian faith and professional social work practice. NACSW has over 1,600 members from all over North America who practice social work in a wide range of settings and with diverse populations. Members include direct practitioners, community organizers and developers, social work administrators, educators, and researchers, as well as students and clergy. NACSW strives to help its members understand how to bring together their Christian faith and social work practice, connect and network with other Christians in social work, and offer their social work skills and experience to support the social ministry of the faith community.
NACSW seeks to fulfill its mission by offering some the following services and benefits to its members and friends:
A quarterly newsletter, Catalyst, as well as a quarterly refereed journal, Social Work and Christianity
Quarterly audio conference workshops (providing CEUs), as well as access to monthly podcasts
Annual three-day conventions (since 1950), as well as more local regional conferences and workshops
A job posting service, NACSW's Christian JobNet, which allows members and friends to view jobs online and post their resumes and job ads
A growing list of books, CDs, and other publications
Local chapters and fellowship groups, as well as member interest groups for members with shared interests, experiences, and training/skills
Professional liability insurance coverage
A growing presence on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn
Many of NACSW's members have training in mental health work and joined emergency response teams that mobilized after the 9/11 attacks, provided support to victims of Hurricane Katrina, and responded to many other disasters in North America. Most recently, NACSW has offered several trainings on providing spiritually and religiously sensitive support for veterans returning from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, while as partnering with other organizations supporting veterans and their families. NACSW encourages its members to consider volunteering to support the Give an Hour™ program.
For more information about NACSW, please e-mail info@nacsw.org or call 203.270.8780.
Center for Deployment Psychology Offers Free
Military Cultural Competence Training
Online Course: Military Cultural Competence
180 minutes
This interactive online training course provides an overview of military culture to include organizational structure, rank, branches of service, core values, and demographics as well as similarities and differences between the Active and Reserve components. It is intended to assist civilian mental health providers in better understanding, communicating, and effectively interacting with service members and their families.
About the Center for Deployment Psychology
As the number, duration and frequency of military deployments increase, so do the behavioral health difficulties of service members and their families. To better fulfill the unmet deployment-related behavioral health needs of service members and their families, the Center for Deployment Psychology (CDP), an innovative Department of Defense psychology training consortium, was established in 2006. The CDP is a Tri-Service center initially funded by Congress and now a component center of the DoD's Defense Center of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury. The CDP's mission is to train military and civilian psychologists, psychology interns/residents, and other behavioral health professionals to provide high quality deployment-related behavioral health services to military personnel and their families.
The CDP is designed in a "hub-and-spoke" framework with the headquarters at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS) in Bethesda, Maryland, and satellite sites at each of the eleven Military Treatment Facilities that house established APA-accredited Psychology Internship programs. Under the direction of David Riggs, Ph.D., a nationally recognized expert in posttraumatic stress disorder, the CDP has developed a series of training experiences to prepare mental health professionals to work with Service members and families on deployment related issues.
Web-based Training for CE Credits The CDP does not offer CE credits for these interactive online courses. Individuals interested in taking these online courses for CE credits for a cost will instead be directed to Essential Learning: www.essentiallearning.com. These interactive Web-based courses have been developed by Essential Learning in collaboration with CDP Subject Matter Experts. Any questions regarding pricing, CE credits, or technical issues should be addressed to Essential Learning.
College of DuPage Offers Veterans Counseling Certificate Program
The College of DuPage is offering a new Veterans Counseling Certificate program--the first of its kind in Illinois!
This program is designed to help our nation meet the growing demand for professionals trained to handle the unique issues faced by those who serve our country. The 26-credit-hour program provides specialized training for individuals working with veterans, and is funded through a Congressional grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The spring semester begins January 12, 2012.
Online courses for this certificate will also be available.
American Corporate Partners Launches "Quick Question" Site for Veterans' Business Questions
American Corporate Partners (ACP) is launching a brand new initiative to help veterans achieve their career goals. The first of its kind, ACP AdvisorNet is a free, online "Quick Question Community" connecting veterans with business leaders across the country. Through an interactive and easy-to-use interface, veterans can ask questions about career development, employment, and small business and receive advice from business professionals with expertise in a variety of fields. Veterans and Advisors can follow topics and Q&A threads or send private messages to initiate offline conversations.
ACP AdvisorNet is open to all current and former members of the U.S. military and their immediate family, as well as business leaders nationwide looking to share their expertise and advice. All users can ask or answer questions whenever they want, wherever they are, and are able to see the professional and/or military backgrounds of other users, promoting an environment of accountability and trust.
Visit the site now at www.ACP-AdvisorNet.org and get advice regarding your business questions.
The Center for Neuroscience and Regenerative Medicine Continues to Develop New Approaches to Brain Injury Diagnosis and Recovery
In the two years since its inception, the Center for Neuroscience and Regenerative Medicine (CNRM) has become a catalyst for brain injury research and transformed the research interactions among federal agencies within the National Capital Area.
The CNRM is a collaborative federal medical research program of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). CNRM research programs address the full spectrum of traumatic brain injury (TBI), with special focus on militarily relevant forms of TBI, including the concurrent development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with TBI.
Congress established CNRM in 2008 to bring together the expertise of physicians and scientists at these institutions and the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to develop innovative approaches to brain injury diagnosis and recovery.
The CNRM has 23 active clinical research studies with 17 recruiting TBI patients. These studies will help develop more effective assessments of TBI and PTSD, improve brain imaging, and test new treatment strategies.
Most CNRM studies involve advanced brain scanning. The CNRM's newly acquired Biograph mMR is one of the first integrated whole-body simultaneous positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) devices. Dr. Regina Armstrong, director of CNRM, notes: "A major challenge in the diagnosis and treatment of both military and civilian brain injury patients is the lack of sufficient tools to evaluate the type and extent of injury in a given patient. The DoD, through USU and CNRM, has supported development of this new tool of simultaneous PET/MRI at the NIH Clinical Center. We expect the NIH investigators have the expertise to take maximal advantage of this technology by designing novel neuroimaging protocols and molecular probes that can significantly improve how TBI research is performed."
Experimental treatment studies include cognitive rehabilitation using a computer interface, balance therapy using an oral device, aerobic exercise therapy, bright light therapy, and transcranial direct current stimulation.
A new study is enrolling healthy service members who have returned from deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan within the last six weeks. The goal of the research is to identify objective predictors of PTSD and post-concussive syndrome (PCS), so service members who are at higher risk of developing these conditions can be treated earlier, perhaps even before showing symptoms.
Studies currently take place at multiple military and civilian sites, including Walter Reed National Military Medical Center (WRNMMC), the National Intrepid Center of Excellence (NICoE), Madigan Army Medical Center (MAMC), Fort Campbell, the National Institutes of Health, Suburban Hospital, and Washington Hospital Center. CNRM is actively seeking collaborative arrangements with military treatment facilities, units, deployment programs, and other military organizations around the country to support enrollment of service members and veterans.
In the spring of 2011, the CNRM launched a Web site, http://BrainInjuryResearch.usuhs.mil, several social media portals, and a toll-free telephone number to reach out directly to the TBI community (both military and civilian) and the general public. The Web site provides information in layman's terms about the CNRM, TBI, and PTSD, lists studies currently enrolling participants, and provides links to relevant resources.
Give an Hour™is grateful for the support of all of our mental health association partners. If you represent a mental health association and are interested in learning more about how you can work with Give an Hour™ either nationally or on a local level, please contact info@giveanhour.org.
please know that you will no longer be able to receive important communications from GAH to all providers. Please also know that we try very hard to keep our group e-mails to a minimum.
