Efforts on to focus on returning soldiers

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June 29, 2010

By KIM SMITH DEDAM Staff Writer The Press Republican Tue Jun 29, 2010, 04:20 PM EDT

SARANAC LAKE — Two U.S. Army generals delivered a message of hope here Tuesday for wounded warriors.

They came armed with a fresh approach to war trauma and the ongoing battle against post-traumatic stress disorder.

Held at Trudeau Institute, the parlay was organized by Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau, an ardent supporter of veterans' respite and reintegration.

He is the great-grandson of Edward L. Trudeau, the celebrated scientist who established his laboratory to research tuberculosis a century ago in the community of Saranac Lake, a village that rose to support his fresh-air approach to taking the cure.

Building on his great-grandfather's experience of healing and life "in a place of soul-stirring beauty," Trudeau said, "we're here today because of hope. In the efforts to make warriors whole again, we are all stakeholders."

Dialogue centered on the burgeoning Patriot Hills at Saranac Lake, a family healing and reintegration center for American warriors.

ADJUSTMENTS

Trudeau introduced Brig. Gen. Loree K. Sutton, M.D., special assistant to the assistant secretary of defense and director of the Department of Defense Center for Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury in Rosslyn, Va.

Sutton pointed to the tragedy uncovered at Walter Reed Army Hospital three years ago in despondent living conditions and treatment of veterans awaiting services.

Since then, the Army has waged "our own kind of insurgency," Sutton said, to establish a rehabilitation leg of warfare, "which we really didn't know that much about."

The Army's best-practice framework is based on resilience, recovery and reintegration to recognize that soldiers aren't built with an on-off switch, either good-to-go or spent, Sutton said.

The new protocol views spiritual injuries in war on par with physical injuries.

"It's tough adjusting from being a target to shopping," Sutton said.

'THEY ARE ALONE'

Maj. Gen. Robert John Kasulke, a surgeon in Watertown, is also medical reserve commander for the Army National Guard.

Soldiers returning from two, three or five deployments often go home to rural communities where support and medical care is usually hard to reach.

"They are out there alone," Kasulke said, and medical practitioners may not always spot the early signs of post-traumatic stress disorder or other psychological issues.

"We need to bring services to communities like this, so it's easy to get to."

CRISIS MODEL

Enter Dr. Laurie Leitch and Elaine Miller-Karas, founders of the Trauma Resource Institute, a facility that trains communities worldwide to respond to crisis and disaster.

Building from experience in tsunami-torn Thailand, regions destroyed by earthquakes and hurricane-wracked Gulf Coast, the two civilian crisis workers developed the Trauma Resiliency Model.

It rebalances crisis response on the local level, aiming to build trauma-informed and resiliency-versed communities.

"War trauma is a public-health emergency," Leitch said, splashing statistics across a board-room screen at Trudeau Institute:

▶ Nearly 300,000 veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression.

▶ Almost half a million U.S. veterans seen through the Veterans Health Administration last year had a substance-use disorder.

▶ The unemployment rate for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars hit 14.7 percent in March.

▶ Women Marines have a 9.2-percent divorce rate, which is three times the national average.

▶ 1.5 million veterans are at risk for homelessness.

RESILIENT ZONE

Presenting Patriot Hills at Saranac Lake as a "fresh approach," Leitch called it an intervention.

The Trauma Resiliency Model is a biologically based process that changes traumatic triggers.

Resiliency awareness focuses on the autonomic nervous system, Leitch said, and essentially reframes warriors' ability to recognize their "Resilient Zone."

From observing the response to this approach seen in disaster areas around the world, Leitch and Miller-Karas said the process works in any language and across religious belief systems.

The biological reaction to threat and fear is the same in all humans, Leitch explained.

"We are all neurologically wired the same way."

E-mail Kim Smith Dedam at: kdedam@pressrepublican.com