Race was not on my radar growing up because I was surrounded by people who mostly looked just like me. As a White female growing up in a place so small it was technically a village, the most salient aspects of identity for me were around gender and socioeconomic status (SES). In my family, traditional gender roles prescribed the expectations of me and what I could do.
The number of veterans that have returned to and reside in rural areas. The rates of PTSD for veterans from the OIF/OEF, Gulf War and Vietnam era range from 11-20% and just over 50% of rural veterans are connected with the VA Health Care System, making community mental health resources a critical need for rural veterans.
During my 20+ years working in the mental health field, I have worked with multiple military-connected couples. Often, the entry point for couples’ work was a spouse who had been given an ultimatum about working on resolving marital conflict or face separation/divorce. In one study by Pflieger et al. (2018), researchers found that while military couples face additional stressors, the majority of marital dissatisfaction can be explained by stressors not unique to the military service. In my work with couples, I found this to be true. While many of the stressors may have surfaced during their military service (i.e., conflict regarding parental responsibilities during the deployment cycle), the stressors themselves are also found in civilian couples
One of the courses that I teach frequently for the Center for Deployment Psychology (CDP) is “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Depression: Working with Service Members & Veterans” (CBT-D). At CDP, we update all of our courses regularly to ensure that they’re current and fresh. With the current CBT-D workshop updates, I’m excited to be able to incorporate information from Dr. Judith Beck’s newly released third edition of Cognitive Behavior Therapy: Basics and Beyond.
Providing therapy to military-connected clients with PTSD during the pandemic has raised my awareness about the intersection between trauma symptoms, COVID-19-related anxiety and distress, and military values that can help individuals cope with the outbreak like having good situational awareness, taking individual responsibility, applying discipline, and striving for the larger mission to maintain safety and protect others. My clinical work has also led me to think more about how the pandemic is impacting military members and their families overall.