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NEW JERSEY BOOSTS AID FOR VETERAN COUNSELING --
But state and county services officials say the
real
challenge will be getting the word out to the
veterans and their families who need help.
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State plans to boost aid for veteran counseling
BY KIRK MOORE
TOMS RIVER BUREAU
TOMS RIVER — There's an extra $1.3 million in the proposed 2008 state
budget to provide counseling for returned military veterans, but state
and county services officials say the real challenge will be getting the
word out to the veterans and their families who need that help.
With estimates that as many as 29 percent of Iraq war veterans will feel
some effects of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, the state
Division of Veterans Services' PTSD task force met here Monday to sound
out ideas for using the additional money called for by Gov. Corzine in
his budget proposal.
"PTSD is just in its gestational phase. We're just seeing the first
drops of the coming wave," said Sean Evers of Evers Psychological
Associates in Manasquan, a psychologist who has worked with Shore area
veterans in treating the anxiety disorder since 1984.
Back then, the Vietnam Veterans Leadership Program took the lead in a
then-innovative program to provide counseling, recalled John Dorrity,
director of the Ocean County Veterans Service Bureau. The system still
runs today, with referrals through state and county veterans offices.
"We've got the treatment end of it down, pretty much. This program
actually started here in Ocean County in 1982," said Dorrity, a Vietnam
veteran. With little money for promotion and advertising, veterans
service workers talked about low-cost options for reaching out, from
bumper stickers to banner airplanes over the beaches.
The National Institute of Mental Health defines PTSD as a disorder that
"develops after a terrifying ordeal that involved physical harm or the
threat of physical harm."
People with PTSD may startle easily — sudden loud noises that sound like
weapons firing are a well-known trigger among combat veterans. The
prolonged anxiety can lead people to become emotionally numb, even
toward close family and friends, lose interest in things they used to
enjoy, and become irritable or in some cases even aggressive, according
to the federal agency.
Experts say anxiety has plagued every generation of American soldiers.
PTSD got its modern name and clinical definition from the Vietnam War,
when one in 10 American men served during the 1960s and early 1970s,
according to Walter Florek, a psychologist and director of A & W
Psychology in Lakewood.
"So you had 10 percent of the male population keenly aware of what this
kind of fighting is like," Florek said.
By comparison, the all-volunteer force committed to Iraq and Afghanistan
are far fewer in numbers, and they return home to a society that has
much less understanding, he said.
"Besides that, we have older participants. I was 19 years old" in
Vietnam, Dorrity said.
By contrast, the average ages of returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans
are much higher, partly because of the heavy involvement of National
Guard and Reserve troops who have had much longer military careers, he
said.
For those soldiers, there's additional stress of worrying about families
they left at home, and repeated deployments that send them back to
combat for more than a year at a time. If PTSD problems crop up when
they get home, the result can be "a family that's functioning at a much
lower level than if the vet had not been compromised," Florek said.
Evers uses a military analogy when he talks to veterans about seeking
treatment.
"I always think of it as a missile being launched. If you have that
quarter-inch of error at launch, it's not until you're far down the
trajectory that you realize you'll miss the target," he said. "You need
to treat it early, so you don't go through four jobs and two marriages
before realizing you have a problem."
The proposed state budget has an additional $500,000 earmarked for
veterans' mental health services, plus $800,000 for grants to veterans
organizations and community groups to provide additional services, said
Gary R. Englert, director of the state Division of Veterans Services. A
"yellow-ribbon commission" is setting out to determine how to best
prioritize that spending, he said.
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Larry Scott --
