From Combat to Counseling: Service members, veterans and military family mental health

 

This is the debut article of what is intended to be a monthly online column about counseling military-affiliated clients.

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Service members, veterans and their families face some unique challenges both during and after military service. There’s the stuff that is widely known — deployments, constant moving, a regimented lifestyle — and then there’s the stuff that isn’t so well-known. This includes the experience of living in a mutually supportive community; a lack of individualism and getting used to relying on others while others rely on you; for veterans, a lack of purpose and meaning in post-military life; for family members, experiencing the aftermath of the military, because it’s a stressful job. No one is getting out of the military without a couple of dents in the fender.

Sometimes, the challenges faced by the military population turn into crisis. The high rate of suicide in the service members, veterans and their families (SMVF) community is well-known. Given a higher level of exposure to trauma, service members and veterans may be more likely to develop posttraumatic stress disorder and other psychological conditions. And with greater physical danger comes a higher risk of catastrophic injury, which comes with its own problems, including the need to adjust to a new reality.

This is where the counseling profession comes in. As clinical mental health professionals, we are uniquely qualified to help the SMVF population live the life that they desire and deserve. We look at mental health from a wellness perspective, not an illness perspective. People with a military background will reject the concept of “sickness” and “brokenness” because, to them, that’s equal to weakness. If someone approaches a service member, veteran or military family member with pity, as if they’re a broken-winged bird, there will probably be a bit of a confrontation.

I know, because I’m a member of this community.

Who am I?

I retired from the U.S. Army in 2014 after a 22-year career. After retiring, I took on a new mission to help my brothers and sisters in arms, and their families, adjust to the circumstances that put some of those dents in their fenders. After several years of clinical work, I realized that my lived experience combined with my clinical background could help others. Which is where this column comes in.

Over the coming months, I’ll be sharing some of my insights about the culture and character of the military. Even though the need is great, the counseling profession doesn’t include a lot of people like me — former service members who have become professional counselors. As a matter of fact, that is what brought me to the profession — a chance encounter at just the right time and someone saying exactly the right thing to someone who was open to hearing it.

I was not a mental health professional when I was in the Army. I was in logistics, which is the Army’s euphemistic way of describing supply and transportation. In 2007, knowing that I would eventually have to leave the military, I started going back to school while I was deployed to Iraq. I was looking for a degree with the least amount of math possible and came across an associate degree in counseling and applied psychology. I thought that might make me a better leader, and I was interested in psychology, so I figured why not?

Fast-forward nearly a year. My unit was redeploying from Iraq after 15 months, and we were participating in post-deployment reintegration sessions. We all went to a conference center at a local hotel, where we were presented with breakout sessions on not going too wild with our drinking, not being mean to the neighbors … that kind of thing.

One of the breakout sessions was led by a counselor from the local Vet Center. For those of you not familiar with Vet Centers, they are outpatient mental health clinics that are part of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) but separate from the main VA health care system. The counselors at the Vet Centers are typically veterans themselves, as was the case with this clinician. She introduced herself and said that she was a retired Air Force officer. I don’t remember much of what she talked about that day, but something she said struck me then and stays with me now: “By the way, if any of you are interested in psychology, consider a career in the mental health industry. There are not enough combat veterans in our field.”

That’s all it took. Up until that point, I had not considered becoming a mental health counselor. After that, I started on the path that I’m on now and, with the help of many mentors along the way, currently work as a counselor at a private outpatient clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado, that primarily serves the military population.

What the counselor said that day was correct then, and it still holds true now: There are not enough veterans in the counseling career field serving others in the military population. At the same time, that truth does not minimize the need for mental health counseling for the military population. There are two solutions to this: Bring more veterans into the counseling profession, and help those clinicians in the counseling profession who are not veterans to understand more about the unique needs of the military population.

As professional counselors, we recognize the need to be culturally competent with whatever client populations we work. We can’t work with someone from another culture without knowing about that culture; the ACA Code of Ethics clearly identifies this.

In that sense, the military population is an entirely different culture. Anything that defines the characteristics of a culture — ways of dressing, language, conceptualization of the world — applies to the military. I often describe it this way: It’s as if I went to England to live for 22 years and then moved back to the United States. Sure we spoke the same general language in those two countries, but there were also significant cultural differences between them and, therefore, adjustments that I needed to make. That’s how service members and their families feel after military service.

So, the goals of this column will be:

• To provide insights into the culture of military-affiliated clients
• To support counselors who find themselves working with service members, veterans and their families
• To answer questions (if you have any, feel free to drop me a line at duane@veteranmentalhealth.com)

Thank you for your willingness to serve the military-affiliated population and for your willingness to learn more. Your efforts are greatly appreciated

 

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Duane France is a retired U.S. Army noncommissioned officer and combat veteran who practices as a licensed professional counselor in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He is the director of veteran service for the Family Care Center, a private outpatient mental health clinic specializing in service members, veterans and their families. He is also the executive director of the Colorado Veterans Health and Wellness Agency, a 501(c)3 nonprofit that is professionally affiliated with the Family Care Center. In addition to his clinical work, he writes and speaks about veteran mental health on his blog and podcast at veteranmentalhealth.com. Contact him at duane@veteranmentalhealth.com.

 

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Opinions expressed and statements made in articles appearing on CT Online should not be assumed to represent the opinions of the editors or policies of the American Counseling Association.