Bringing Our Veterans Home: What They Really Need
Now that an incredible number of Iraqi war veterans are back home, how are we going to help them integrate back into society?
I recently shared a link to a video stating a cold, hard fact: there are more suicides in our veteran population than there were total combat deaths. You may want to read that again, because it is really important — there were more suicides among recent war veterans than all combat deaths combined. Obviously, this is a problem of enormous scale.
I won’t get too political here, but I will stick to the facts and what I see as the solutions.
The Reality They’re Coming Home To
All of our soldiers who served in Iraq are home, or coming home, by the end of 2011. They are returning to a very high unemployment rate — and an almost unbelievable one among veterans specifically. According to Dan Beucke at BusinessWeek.com, veterans aged 18–24 had a 30.4% jobless rate in October, and Black veterans of the same age had a rate of 48%.
This just compounds the other challenges so many veterans face when re-entering civilian life after everything they’ve seen and experienced.
The Nervous System Doesn’t Know the War Is Over
If you’ve been paying attention, you know that Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is at record highs among our soldiers. And here’s something important — even among those who did not directly experience a dangerous or near-death situation, PTSD-like symptoms and a battlefield mentality can still dominate in the everyday safety of civilian life.
One of my acupuncture patients is a veteran, and her husband had just returned from Iraq. As he sat in my waiting room, we talked for a few minutes. On her next visit, she told me he didn’t like coming to my office — because it has two doors, and he had to sit with his back to one of them.
That gave me real insight into something I hadn’t fully considered: even if you haven’t experienced firsthand violence in a wartime situation, your nervous system has been prepared for it. The brain restructures itself to be primed and ready — because in that environment, it very well may need to be. It’s a survival mechanism. The brain understands this deeply.
A relative of mine also came back from both Iraq and Afghanistan with back pain that had emotional roots. She described how the sounds of bombs all around were so terrifying they caused involuntary body movements — and then an inability to sleep. She hadn’t experienced direct combat either, but she absolutely experienced its effects.
Trauma Prints Are Real
After these conversations, I realized that all veterans of the recent wars are very likely carrying what I call “trauma prints” — the rewiring of neural networks in the brain in order to protect a person’s life, whether the threat was real or perceived.
Once these neural pathways are set — think concrete — they can become permanent structural changes. The difficulty arises when those networks start interfering with a person’s happiness and quality of life, as we see with PTSD.
What We Can Do
Our job is to give these men and women as much love and understanding as humanly possible — and more when called for. We need to be better at welcoming them home and letting them know we are here if they need us.
Don’t underestimate the power of compassionate listening. It can do a great deal. And yet for many veterans, the wounds run deeper, and more targeted support is needed. Regardless of where any of us stand politically, our veterans deserve real care — and quite frankly, it just isn’t happening at the level it should be.
“Without a favorable internal climate, a person’s thinking is likely to drive them crazy… The right starting point for creative thinking and acting is who we divinely are, and a refusal to be anything other than that. I won’t be untrue to myself.” — David Karchere
