A few days ago NPR ran a story on a California national guard unit embedding psychologists into their unit. (Listen to the story here). The program is an experiment to see if they can break the stigma of getting help from mental health professionals when they experience PTSD and other traumas. I would assume they are trying to do more than just break the stigma. They’d like to prevent problems or treat before things get too bad.
Near the end of the story, they talk to 2 soldiers about the program. Both are highly negative and list two problems: (a) they feel that the psychologists are unable to really understand their experiences since they weren’t there in the battle, and (b) they feel the counselors are intrusive–“always trying to get in our heads…” They don’t want to keep thinking about events or to talk about their feelings.
Seems like a good idea on paper. Give soldiers a place to address the traumas of war before becoming full-blown. And contrary to one of the soldiers, good therapists can understand soldier experiences without having faced the exact same situation. But there may be better ways to spend the money and get the same results. Training chaplains to address these issues may provide a less stigmatizing and more accepted form of uncovering fears, struggles, etc. Training actual soldiers to provide various forms of debriefing or assessments may also be useful. One other problem is that psychology often finds a good thing (debriefing) and then tries to foist it on everyone–something that we now know is not helpful and can be harmful. Until we have a better sense of helping a variety of at-risk folk deal with the traumas of war, these kinds of programs aren’t going to be that helpful. I’m all for helping our soldiers and I do think we psychologists have something to offer. However, we have to avoid thinking we already know everything and spend a fair amount of time listening and learning first.
Musings on Faith and Psychology 