As we ended last week’s blog, I was suggesting that the solution in changing the behavior in our wounded warriors would be found in addressing the emotional states caused by combat. Unfortunately, this is not what we do. As most of you know, when our warriors become combat ineffective from the “unseen wounds” of war, their first-line choices for healing are medication and/or exposure therapy.
We've all heard this analogy when describing a flawed approach..."trying to put a square peg into a round hole", right? It couldn't be more true when we refer to our current mental health approach with combat veterans. As recent as yesterday, we read that combat troop ailments are creating a medical backlog in the already strained system.
In my last blog post, we looked at the delay of our warriors reporting symptoms consistent with "adrenaline poisoning." In many of the study subjects, there existed a 3-6 month delay in leaving the combat box, before symptoms for combat stress fully manifested and began to affect the warrior's behavior.