Real Talk: Mental Health By Jenny Lynne Stroup, Outreach Coordinator for the Cohen Clinic at VVSD
“Thank You Caregivers” Several years ago, I had the opportunity to work with the Army’s Warrior Care and Transition Program (WCTP), the command for wounded, ill, and injured soldiers. I was an event planner for a non-profit that was supporting the WCTP during its trials for the Warrior Games. My husband had been home from Afghanistan for about nine months when I took the job and during that time, I noticed things. Things that reminded me of the briefing I sat through on PTSD. Things that were being shooed away as no big deal or me being overly anxious and dramatic. But there were things. Many of the soldiers participating in the Warrior Trials had visible wounds. Some were missing limbs, others had partial limb deformities, but some looked just like me. No visible consequence of time spent at war. I later learned these men and women, the ones who looked like me, suffered from traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). They were included in the trials because they were using sports as a way to cope with the lasting effects of traumatic war experiences. During my time as an event coordinator, I had the privilege of staying on location. Doing so gave me extra time with the participants. I ate meals with them and hung out before lights out. I listened to their stories about how they were injured and what they aspired to do now that an active-duty career was off the table. I learned about their families, some of whom were with the soldiers because they were their soldiers’ full-time caregivers. In a lot of the stories, I saw myself. Not because I was a wounded warrior, but because what they said sounded a lot like the things I was seeing at home: lack of sleep, unexplained agitation, an adamant demand that they must sit facing the door of any building they were in. Little things, but things, nonetheless. 28
WWW.HomelandMagazine.com / NOVEMBER 2020
National Family Caregivers Month
“You really made a difference here. You connected with our soldiers on a level that brought them to life. You were more than a cheerleader and a snack giver. How did you do that? How did you know how to connect with them so well?” he asked. “This isn’t the first time I’ve been around people affected by their time in a war zone. Some of the things your men and women talked about, I see at my house,” I replied. Stunned silence. Even now, as I type these words, and see in black and white how similar my home life was to the lives of the folks I worked with from the WCTP I have a difficult time acknowledging myself as a caregiver. So, in honor of National Family Caregivers Month and Military Family Appreciation Month I want to share a few identifiers of who a military caregiver is and what he/she can do to support his/her mental health. • If you do things for someone else that the individual is not able to do independently anymore, you are a caregiver. • If you are taking someone to medical appointments, coordinating medical visits, and/or managing someone’s medications, you are a caregiver. • If you are advocating for a loved one’s medical assistance or helping him/her remember important details about his/her health and well-being, you are a caregiver. You may be a spouse, a parent, or a child of a wounded, ill, or injured veteran or service member. Caregiving is not limited to a single identifier.