Wounds of war remain forever, psychologist-veteran argues
May 9th, 2009
Psychologist Armond Aserinsky wrote very movingly to a listserv of his experience as a young veteran conducting interviews with other veterans recently returned from war. His writing highlights the severe emotional toll that war takes on the soldiers we send to fight. Armond has kindly given me permission to reproduce his piece here:
Dear group,
As a recently discharged veteran of the Vietnam War and brand new Psych Grad Student I was offered a special research assistantship that required me to interview the gravely injured soldiers undergoing treatment at The Valley Forge Military Hospital, in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. Talk about jumping into the pool at the deep end without having had any swimming lessons. But the project leader needed my understanding of and credibility with the military to gain access to this very “sensitive” population.
Let me say that the lessons I learned over those months have never been forgotten. While I know a lot more now than I did back then (in a lot of ways), I’ve never come to regard those raw observations as wrong. What I saw, in a nutshell, is that the military tried to do a very good job patching those young soldiers together PHYSICALLY, but the mental health aspects were woefully undertreated.
During the acute phase of hospitalization, and the months of convalescent hospital care, some efforts were made to engage the patients in various kinds of support groups. While the expertise of the fellow heading up the MH side of the clinical team was well below that of the medical members, that young social worker was a very brave and compassionate man who did some real good. The real problem was not at this point in the treatment process.
What was wrong, and still is, was the complete lack of recognition that these soldiers’ lives had been permanently derailed. The sense of loss, the unremitting nature of the injuries, comes to have a grinding, corrosive effect on the sense of self, on coping, on relationships. What bullets have torn apart is often never really put together, and every wound to the flesh has a mental counterpart that festers in the darkness of denial and ignorance.
I know that today’s soldiers receive miraculous treatments for injuries that killed their predecessors in the field. Yet one gets the same impression now that I had way back when: an injured serviceman is offered “help if he should need it”, as if MH sequela were rare and rather unexpected. Instead of a lifetime program of benefits and active support, the soldier receives a set of patches when obvious tears in his physical or mental fabric develop. “Oh, so you’re drinking a case of beer a night? We’ve got a D & A counselor you can see down here at the V. A.”
Of course the damage to minds is not limited to those who’ve been shot up or partially blown apart. That’s what the letter to Mrs. Obama is meant to address. What I’m proposing is that just about everyone who’s had to be stitched together ought to be regarded as an MH casualty in need of some system of support that doesn’t require a fellow to shoot somebody or fall down drunk before a sliver of help is offered. For those who were lucky enough to get through the bloodbath in one piece, the numbers are only slighter better.
We owe it to take real care of each person who Dick Cheney and all the other chicken hawks sent out to fight their foolish wars. Real care means recognizing up front that if you were “over there” you’re going to have problems, because that’s the nature of being human.
I hope I’m making myself clear. I still carry some wounds from just being involved with the young men who gave their arms and legs for an unnecessary war and were then sent home to limp and ache and suffer for the rest of their lives, as if it were no big deal. “Come back and see us if you’re having problems.”
If. IF?! IF?!
Entry Filed under: Mental Health, Psychiatry, Psychology, US Troops, Veterans, War and Peace