For many soldiers, returning home after a tour of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan presents them with a new battleground: everyday life. And without help, navigating the readjustment can be treacherous—for soldiers and for their loved ones.

 

 

Two Walden graduate psychology students, both with military experience themselves, have been on the front lines of helping returning soldiers make that transition. In doing so, they have made use of the knowledge they gained in their Walden programs, and have in turn drawn on their counseling experiences for their coursework. While their ultimate career goals may differ, these students share a commitment to making a positive difference in the lives of soldiers and civilians through their counseling services.

 

 

 

‘A Personal and Professional Passion’

 

 

Major Steven Keihl, who is director of mental health for the California National Guard, served 16 months in Iraq and knows firsthand the particular challenges these combat veterans face. Keihl completed his M.S. in Psychology at Walden in the spring of 2008 and is continuing on for a Ph.D. in Psychology with a specialization in Health Psychology. Keihl was selected for his position at the Joint Forces Headquarters in Sacramento, Calif., due to his counseling expertise—prior to entering Walden, he had earned a Ph.D. in counseling from the International Seminary—but it is far more than a job for him.

 

“Dealing with the reintegration needs of our soldiers returning from Iraq is a personal and professional passion,” Keihl says. “I struggled with a lot of those issues myself.”

 

Challenges faced by returning soldiers include posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)—about which, Keihl says, “there is a lot of misinformation”—and other mental health issues, caused in part by long combat time. “In WWII, the actual combat time was less than 100 days a year,” Keihl explains, “and right now the average Iraqi Freedom combatant is engaged 221 days a year.

 

“We make sure we tell [soldiers] that it’s normal for normal people exposed to abnormal events to struggle with readjustment to the world they come back to—[particularly] socially, with primary relationships. They feel lost, like they don’t belong,” he says.

 

Depression and suicide are among the risks for returning soldiers. In fact, Keihl notes that the Army suicide rate in 2007 was the highest in 26 years, according to the Department of Defense.

 

Returning soldiers from the National Guard and the Army Reserve are at a particular disadvantage because they don’t have the same support resources as active duty personnel, and they must reintegrate into a civilian lifestyle, often facing insensitivity. “Someone [at their civilian job] asks them, ‘Did you kill anybody?’ and that’s the last question they want to answer,” says Keihl.

 

He and just three other full-time staff members are charged with managing clinical services for 22,000 California National Guard soldiers. Therefore, he says, “We do not provide clinical services; we connect soldiers to the various agencies that can help them. We hand-walk people through the process, and make sure they get the treatment they need.”

 

Keihl oversees six programs and participates in six others, covering issues ranging from suicide prevention to marriage issues and financial problems. They also have an “Embed Program,” in which civilians train with troops and address mental health issues “right on the ground level,” Keihl explains. “No other state has that.” (To access online resources for soldiers and their families, see the links at the end of this story.)

 

Keihl has found that what he learned in his Walden courses—for example, on the topics of memory and learning and traumatic brain injury—“informed the training the soldiers got throughout the state of California.” And his research design and statistics class affected how he gathered information for a research project for the state of California.

 

“Walden has been a great experience for me,” he says. “It was very applicable to my work.” He also notes that for military personnel like himself, who travel so much, Walden’s flexibility is key: “I did one month of the program when I was deployed out of the country,” he says. “As long as you have a laptop and Internet access, you can make this work.”

 

Above and Beyond

 

It’s been more than 30 years since Maurice Patrick (“Pat”) O’Connor was in the military, but after he began his Ph.D. in Psychology program at Walden, he found himself back on base. During an eight-month practicum in the Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP) at Madigan Army Medical Center outside Tacoma, Wash., O’Connor volunteered more than 1,400 hours of time as a counselor addressing the mental health care needs of returning soldiers. For his exceptional service, he received a certificate of appreciation from the Medical Center and the Red Cross.

 

The outpatient program, designed by O’Connor’s supervisor, Dr. Russell Hicks, specifically for U.S. soldiers returning from Iraq or Afghanistan, addresses the wide variety of mental health issues directly related to service in these combat zones. The unique program gives soldiers 60 hours of therapy in 10 days—an hour and a half of psychotherapy a day, supplemented by four hours of psycho-educational group therapy on topics such as interpersonal communication and managing stress.

 

“Whenever a brigade would come home, we’d get an influx,” O’Connor says. A new group of 10 to 14 soldiers would start the program each week, with the groups overlapping, so there were always 20 to 30 soldiers—both men and women, but primarily younger soldiers—in the program at any given time.

 

The issues they face can be compounded by the physical stress of combat duty: “Soldiers get about four hours of sleep a night, they consume a lot of caffeine, and their limbic systems get a lot of stress—[they run on] adrenaline for weeks,” O’Connor explains. They may also have PTSD, which O’Connor describes as “a cocktail mixed up of anxiety, depression, and grief.” The outpatient program offers “a safe environment to begin the recovery process.”

 

O’Connor observes that soldiers who are married can have a particularly hard time upon returning from combat because the spouse doesn’t understand what the soldier is going through. “The change in behavior and personality can be rather dramatic: [The soldier] might be hypervigilant, or have anger fits, or wants to isolate himself.” Because these behaviors have a different meaning in this situation than they would otherwise, the spouse misinterprets what’s happening—“there’s a lot of miscommunication.” (See below for information on what you can do to help returning soldiers.)

 

During his practicum at Madigan, O’Connor served as a counselor and a co-therapist, and also led classes. In addition, he says, his goal was “to make sure that every part of the program was integrated into the whole diagnostic process, that no part was an island.” In the certificate of appreciation, Hicks cites O’Connor’s “expertise in reaching out in a warm and sensitive way while guiding these soldiers through various stages of treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health conditions.”

 

O’Connor’s practicum ended in February, and now he is eagerly looking forward to the next stage in his journey. In fact, after earning his master’s in psychology from Walden in 2005, he decided to continue with the Ph.D. program because, he says, “Walden encouraged a critical learning style which increased my hunger for study and development into a professional psychologist.” He says that he would love to work with soldiers again, but that he also wants to work with couples, with geriatric populations, and with adolescents with severe problems.

 

Whatever he decides to do next, he knows it will make a difference. “Walden gave me the opportunity, as someone who’s already been successful in business, to stop and do what I really want to do, and do something fruitful for society.”

 

What You Can Do

 

While returning soldiers may need professional counseling, families and other loved ones can also help them adjust.

 

“Healing happens through relationships,” Pat O’Connor says. “Don’t misunderstand the messages that come from people who have been through war—don’t interpret the [behavior] as pushing you away, but as expressing a need for people to stay in their lives.” He suggests that you “continue to try to reach out to them, to be involved in their lives, to give them a sense that the world still accepts them and loves them. There’s nothing worse than a soldier who feels forgotten.”

 

At the same time, he notes, it’s important to respect the soldier’s boundaries, particularly in terms of what the soldier is willing to talk about. “People who have been through trauma have a boundary that’s there for a reason,” O’Connor says. Loved ones “have to find a way to help them without violating those boundaries.”

 

 

 

 

 

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