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Return and Recovery Program for Military Veterans

Why We Exist: To Assist Veterans and Family Suffering from Adverse Effects of Military Service to our Country

In its recent report "Invisible Wounds: Mental Health and Cognitive Care Needs of America's Returning Veterans," the Rand Corporation states that approximately 300,000 veterans of military service in Iraq and Afghanistan currently suffer post-traumatic stress (PTS) or major depression and about 320,000 may have experienced traumatic brain injury (TBI). The Rand Corporation report indicates that the risk of mental health or brain trauma problems increases with the number of exposures to traumatic military events. The numbers of those with stress-related disorders and brain trauma are surely going to increase as the military actions in those areas continue. The New England Journal of Medicine has reported that, during the first five years after separation from service, suicide rates for veterans of the Vietnam War were 72% higher than those for veterans who did not serve in Vietnam. The latest statistics published show similar rates for veterans of the current conflicts who do not receive help. Of the population of the homeless in this country, twenty to twenty-five percent are military veterans. Government offices offer assistance to distressed veterans, but they often cannot offer enough services to answer the needs in the magnitudes in which they exist.

The New York Times of June 4, 2010 reported that Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates has ordered billions of dollars in annual spending cuts at the Department of Defense: "His goal is $7 billion dollars in spending cuts and efficiencies for 2012, growing to $37 billion dollars annually by 2016…. Among the vexing problems identified by Mr. Gates was the continuously rising cost of health care... 'Health care costs are eating the Defense Department alive,' Mr. Gates said." So, unfortunately, just as the need for care for those suffering the traumas of military service is increasing, Defense Department funding for such care will most likely be decreasing.

Effectiveness of Art Therapy in Assisting the Recovery of Those Suffering Effects of Combat-Related Stress Disorders

Brain imaging research on combat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder has revealed reduced activity in an area governing speech (Broca's area) and increased activity in areas governing fear and anger (the amygdala), memory (the hippocampus), and visual processing (the occipital cortex). These findings are in keeping with the two types of symptoms of PTSD: the so-called "positive" symptoms (hyper-arousal, intrusive thoughts, nightmares, and anger); and the "negative" symptoms (avoidance and emotional numbing). There are many ways of treating PTSD, and some are quite effective, but art therapy has been shown to be effective regarding both the "positive" and "negative" symptoms, while some therapies seem only to address the "positive." Emotional numbing is an inability to feel emotions both positive and negative, and it must be dealt with for recovery to come about.

In using artistic expression, sufferers of PTSD can make images more or less overtly demonstrative of traumatic events or their feelings aroused by them. This is especially possible for those for whom it is difficult or impossible to talk about such things. The making of physical art is an "externalization" (a demonstration outside the self) of the sufferer's condition and its causes, and the revelations of such condition and causes may be emotionally very risky for the individual. Therefore, such activity must be undertaken among others who are trusted to be patient, supportive, and empathetic. To foster these conditions, Artists for the Humanities employs counselors, artists, and mentors, many of whom are combat veterans themselves.

Overview of Therapeutic Services Available to Veterans with PTSD, TBI, or Major Depression

It is difficult to assess how many veterans with combat-related disorders seek assistance from private health care services because such services publish little information concerning their patients. Nevertheless, it is certain that those that do go to private services are those with higher incomes and so can afford them or insurance programs that cover them. The vast majority of combat veterans are low- or middle-income individuals who seek aid from government agencies specifically established for the care of military veterans. It is indisputable that government health agencies are overburdened and simply incapable of answering all the needs of veterans seeking assistance. In August 2009, USA Today reported that, of 36 major Army hospitals, 26 were failing to meet the Pentagon standard requiring that 90% of patients get routine care appointments within seven days. Since 2005, this is an increase of 13% unable to meet the standard. USA Today states "Some of the worst problems for access to care are at installations that house units doing the heaviest fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, Army records show." As a non-profit corporation, Artists for the Humanities offers its rehabilitative programs at no cost to any veteran seeking such assistance as well as to members of their families and other loved ones. Furthermore, Artist for the Humanities offers participatory therapeutic arts programs of a kind that other agencies, private or governmental, have not developed or for which they do not have personnel or facilities.

Today's Environment

In the 1970s, the draft was eliminated. Before that time, nearly any young man of a certain age might be conscripted into military service. This has not been the case for more than thirty years. Since that time, every man and woman that has entered our armed forces has done so voluntarily. In recent years, there have been noticeable changes in the demographics of those coming into our military services. More and more of those that enlist come from the South, the mountain states of the West, and small towns, with fewer coming from the Northeast, the West Coast, and big cities. Furthermore, although the number of service personnel is large (currently 2.4 million members on active and reserve duties), they constitute less than one percent of the total population of our country. This trend is creating a divided society, or, one may say, two separate societies: the relatively small minority that serve in the forces, and the great majority that do not.

As reported in the New York Times, on September 29, 2010, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates commented on these developments in a speech at Duke University. He said that "for most Americans the wars [in Iraq and Afghanistan] remain an abstraction – a distant and unpleasant series of news items that do not affect them personally." He said that it was junior and mid-level officers and sergeants who had borne the brunt of repeat deployments and exposure to fire. While they are "the most battle-tested, innovative and impressive generation of military leaders this country has produced in a very long time," he said that he had to ask the question: "How long can these brave and broad young shoulders carry the burden that we – as a military, as a government, as a society – continue to place on them?"

On the same day that Secretary Gates spoke at Duke, officials at Fort Hood in central Texas reported that four veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had died from what appeared to be self-inflicted gunshot wounds. So far this year, fourteen soldiers there have committed suicide, while six others are believed to have killed themselves, but final determinations have yet to be made. It is reported that Fort Hood (the largest base in the U.S.) and the communities surrounding it have suffered high rates of crime, domestic violence, suicide, and various mental illnesses as wave after wave of soldiers have been deployed abroad over nine years of continual warfare, often serving more than one tour of duty.

During World War I and World War II, the men serving in combat for this country were referred to as "our boys" by the citizens remaining at home. Nowadays such a term may seem quaint, or even condescending, but it reflected the feelings of immediate sympathy that the general populace felt for those in battle. Currently in America most people do not have a family member or loved one in combat. Indeed, most of us never meet anyone that has been in combat or even a friend or relative of someone that has been. Just as the wars are in distant lands, so the fighters of these wars are distant people. Even though they are Americans as we all are, they live in different neighborhoods and pursue ways of life different and separate from our own. For most Americans, feelings of sympathy towards our combat personnel or concern for their welfare may scarcely be felt.

The occurrences of crime, violence, mental illness, and suicide among our combat veterans suggest that the veterans do not feel rooted in American society, do not sense that they are active and integral in the great American culture as a whole. They return from arduous service (often multiple tours of it) to an enormous population of citizens who hardly notice what they have done, and some that do notice may be disdainful or contemptuous towards them. Feelings of despair among such veterans are not surprising, as they may feel rejected, neglected, or forgotten.

This is an era of profoundly diminished feelings of sympathetic connection on the part of the general population towards that minority of Americans who are in our armed forces and who are giving of themselves in so many ways - physically, mentally, and emotionally. It is a time in which all American citizens have an obligation to become aware of the personal costs to the personnel serving in our armed forces. By means of our Fallen Soldiers Project, AFTH raises public awareness especially of those that have given the ultimate sacrifice in service to their country, but also of those currently serving and sacrificing in our theaters of conflict in the Middle East, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

The Return and Recovery for Military Veterans Program of AFTH provides necessary assistance to veterans suffering long-term effects of mental and emotional stress experienced in combat and other situations. Those with whom we work come from the current conflicts, the Persian Gulf War, the Vietnam War, and earlier military conlflicts. We work directly with the veterans, their families, and organizations in their communities. We are currently doing so in cooperative and rewarding ways with the Veterans Administration. We are also working with veterans' organizations, churches, and other community organizations. In this way, we spread the word on a grass-roots level that there are people who are cognizant of the service that veterans have given and are giving, and that the things they have done for this country are acknowledged and appreciated.

Artists for the Humanities is not nation-wide in scope, as we wish it may become. But, by growing in incremental ways, always being sure of the effectiveness of our efforts at our current capacities before taking the next steps towards expansion, we are certain that in the coming years our efforts, both in assisting military veterans and in making public displays celebrating veterans' accomplishments, will raise public consciousness and bring assistance to veterans and reassurance that they are neither disdained nor forgotten. In these ways, we can help to restore the necessary sympathetic social connection between those that are serving and those that are served.