Caring for Veterans
Caring for Families
Forrest L. Kirk, Th.M., BCC
Chief, Chaplain Service
Jack C. Montgomery VA Medical Center
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Objectives
• Discuss Challenges During and After Deployment
for Service Members and Families.
• Explore VA Chaplain Opportunities and
Approaches in caring for Veterans
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Four Causes of Stress Injury
INTENSE OR PROLONGED STRESS
Life
threat

Events that
provoke terror,
horror, or
helplessness
Wear &
tear

Accumulation of
stress from all
sources over time
Inner
conflict
Loss

Death or injury of
others who are
loved and with
whom one
identifies

Events that
contradict
deeply held
moral values
and beliefs
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During Deployment Families
• Feel Concern, worry or
panic, loneliness, sadness
• Have added family duties &
responsibilities
• Learn new skills, make new
friends
• Fear for their service
member's safety
• Feel overwhelmed
• Experience financial
difficulties
• Deal with problems on their
own
• Do not always understand
what their loved ones have
been through
• Are concerned about being
needed and loved
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Home is Different for Veterans
Homecoming is disorienting and can represent a
significant change for a family. They have learned to
live without their military member.
Neither the returning service member nor their family
and friends are the same as they were before
deployment to war.
Families and friends must re-adjust and “re-set” upon
re-integration.
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Family Challenges
• Military has high expectations of families both Active duty
and Reserve components.
• Family members are left with all responsibilities while loved
ones are deployed.
• Family members, are our neighbors, friends, co-workers and
patients.
• All families are changed as a result of a deployment. For a
some family systems, these changes can be debilitating and
life-altering.
• LONG Term Effects (Alberta Martin, 2004).
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War Comes Home . . . . .
“The war was still in him, and it would be in him for a long
time to come, for soldiers who have been bloodied are
soldiers forever. They never fit in…That they cannot forget,
that they do not forget, that they will never allow
themselves to heal completely is their way of expressing
their love for friends who have perished. And they will not
change because they have become what they have become
to keep the fallen alive.”
Mark Halerpin, A Soldier of the Great War
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Family Stress and Suicide
Army: Health Promotion, Risk Reduction, Suicide Prevention Report 2010, (24)
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Family Stressors
Financial
Physical
Negative
Coping
Spiritual and Emotional Stressors
Relationships
Secondary
Trauma
Loss
Moral
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Secondary Trauma
• Trauma also affects those who experience it
indirectly.
• Secondary, or vicarious trauma, refers to those
people who care for, or are involved with,
those who have been directly traumatized.
• Symptomatology very similar to that of PTSD.
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Family Re-setting
Family Re-setting includes:
–
–
–
–
–
Re-establishing relationships (all types)
Processing grief and transition
Relearning basic family skills, roles and
Re-developing community support systems.
Financial and business arrangements
.
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Spouse Abuse . . .
The number of Soldiers who committed spouse
abuse and child abuse or neglect in the last six
years has increased by 177% (913 cases in FY
2004 vs. 1,625 in FY 2009).
Army: Health Promotion, Risk Reduction, Suicide Prevention Report 2010, (80)
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Deployment & Children
Jessica Ramirez (Newsweek reporter) found that a number of children who are
experiencing the repeated absence of their parents are displaying “clinically
significant” mental and behavioral health problems.
Colonel Kris Peterson, a child and adolescent psychiatry consultant to The
Surgeon General of the Army, stated that he is “seeing a range of problems
requiring intervention; from attention issues and heightened aggression, to
anxiety and depression.”
Dr. Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth, the director of the Military Family Research
Institute, says “the signs of trouble among the troops’ children appear to be
growing.”
Army: Health Promotion, Risk Reduction, Suicide Prevention Report 2010, (98)
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Objectives
• Discuss Challenges During and After Deployment
for Service Members and Families.
• Explore VA Chaplain Opportunities and
Approaches in caring for Veterans
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Need for a Community Response
• No one system can provide all the services needed.
• Supporting the family will support the individual.
• 78% of survivors receive 100% of their support from
family members.
• Survivors and caregivers needs are different.
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What Should You Do
 Provide an honest and engaged presence with Veterans, their
families and others offering support .
 Listen nonjudgmentally.
 Understand that war is a type of hell.
 Assist the veteran and their families, but don’t take sides.
 Do not ignore warning signs for suicide, abuse, and other issues.
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What NOT to Do
• Ask if they killed anyone or push for details regarding the
deployment.
• Try to fix their problems.
• Prematurely assuage feelings of guilt.
• Diagnose PTSD, assume PTSD or label PTSD.
• Assume the service member is “unsaved” or does not have a faith
journey.
• Push to get service member involved in church ministries.
• Treat as “heroes” or “show them off”.
• Try to be the therapist or to manage patient outside appropriate
support systems.
• Try to avoid conversations about moral and spiritual injury.
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