Programs help educate families about PTSD

Editor’s note: This is the second article in a two-part series looking at how PTSD affects families.

 For troops, counseling and medical assistance and treatment are available to anyone who asks for help. But keeping up with troop demand for mental health services is already overwhelming the Naval Hospital’s resources.

Camp Lejeune Naval Hospital’s director of Mental Health, Cmdr. Robert O’Byrne, said that family members who come in seeking assistance for similar issues are typically referred to civilian counselors or area and military support programs. 

Whitney Jezek-Power, combat casualty assistance visiting nurse with the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society, visits 10 to 15 such families a week. She said she frequently recommends Military OneSource for counseling, Families Overcoming Under Stress (FOCUS) for resiliency training, free childcare for military families from PEERS family development, and grants from the Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund for those struggling with financial difficulty.

“In my job, I draw them into the fold of moving forward and giving them tools,” she said.

Jezek-Power said in the last few years, the military has become more conscious that not only the troops need attention.

“They realize the family is bearing the bulk and the brunt of this burden,” she said.

But families of former troops who have been out of the ranks for three to five years, before a number of the programs became available, tend not to benefit from these resources and continue to feel helpless as they struggle with the effects of combat trauma, she said.

Linda Havens, site manager for FOCUS aboard Camp Lejeune, said the program is one of the only ones available that assists military families as a whole. In the last two years, she said, participation in the FOCUS program on base has grown.

In one family she worked with, a husband and wife found themselves having distressing fights at mealtime every night. It wasn’t until joining the program and working to understand the situation that the husband, a service member, realized that the sight of meat cooking triggered memories of having to clean up the bodies of dead comrades on deployments.

“Focus is really resiliency training,” she said. “We’re not treating PTSD, but what we can do is help the family build the four core skills of resiliency.”

These include emotional regulation, communication, problem solving and goal-setting, she said.

Families have the tools to overcome the effects of combat stress and trauma, Havens said; the challenge was just to connect them with appropriate resources.

“I think with some of our much younger families, we need to work much harder to reach out to them,” she said. “The more we can reach out and get the information out, the more people we can help.”

How can I get help?

For families of service members, the following resources in Jacksonville and aboard Camp Lejeune are available:

Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society

Counseling, visiting nurse services, financial assistance and more

Nmcrs.org

910-451-5346, ext. 226

Military OneSource

Counseling: six sessions free for troops or family members

Militaryonesource.com

800-342-9647

FOCUS Camp Lejeune

Resiliency training

Focusproject.org

910-450-5631

Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund

Financial assistance

Semperfifund.org

760-725-3680

PEERS Family Development Center

Childcare assistance

910-455-4145