“First and foremost, we listen. The biggest thing that we do is to help normalize a lot of the feelings that people have and to help put them in perspective,” said Dr. Reich, who is head of the Psychoanalytic Couple and Family Institute of New England, SOFAR's umbrella organization.
SOFAR talks with families about the concept of the “new normal,” a term that Dr. Darwin uses to describe the postdeployment life of a military family. Deployment changes soldier and family alike, hampering a return to predeployment routines. SOFAR encourages families to pursue a “new normal” marked by the renegotiation of roles and relationships.
In advocating this new normal, SOFAR seeks to help military families develop realistic expectations about the process of rehabilitation and reintegration that soldiers undergo when they return from war.
“It's going to take a while for people to become reacquainted. There's going to be some renegotiation about what roles people have picked up in the absence of the soldier, which roles they want to continue to carry, and which they don't,” Dr. Darwin said. “Different families have different ways of coming back together again.”
The Rand study, published in April 2008, found that nearly 20% of returning soldiers report symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or major depression. About 19% report sustaining a possible traumatic brain injury during their deployment, while 7% report experiencing both brain injury and PTSD or depression.
According to Dr. Darwin, 50% of Army Reserve and National Guard soldiers will return from service with a diagnosable mental health condition, such as anxiety or depression. Symptoms of PTSD might not manifest until 6-24 months after a soldier has returned from service, making it difficult for veterans and their families to gauge their progress in the reintegration process.
“A soldier's body comes home. The nervous system often doesn't arrive for quite a while,” Dr. Darwin said.
SOFAR educates families about what to expect during the reintegration process and what to flag as a warning sign, “so they can seek help both for themselves and for their soldier,” Dr. Darwin said.
The program offers military families the tools to address secondary trauma, but getting soldiers and these families to take advantage of these has proved difficult.
The Rand study showed that only half of the veterans who report experiencing PTSD or major depression have sought treatment. SOFAR is faced with combating the stigma that often marks popular perceptions of psychotherapy, psychopharmacology, and mental health problems in general.
“The hardest thing for us to do is to destigmatize mental health and to get the families to understand that there are services available and get them to make use of them,” Dr. Darwin said.
The biggest thing that we do is to help normalize the feelings that people have and to help put them in perspective. DR. REICH