Special Collections
Resources for Returning Veterans
Description: Separating from military service and returning to civilian life can present unique challenges for veterans. This collection contains resources to help veterans and their families making this transition. #general
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The Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Relationship
by Diane EnglandWar, physical and sexual abuse, and natural disasters. All crises have one thing in common: Victims often suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and their loved ones suffer right along with them. In this book, couples will learn how to have a healthy relationship, in spite of a stressful and debilitating disorder. They'll learn how to: —Deal with emotions regarding their partner's PTSD —Talk about the traumatic event(s) —Communicate about the effects of PTSD to their children —Handle sexual relations when a PTSD partner has suffered a traumatic sexual event —Help their partner cope with everyday life issuesWhen someone has gone through a traumatic event in his or her life, he or she needs a partner more than ever. This is the complete guide to keeping the relationship strong and helping both partners recover in happy, healthy ways.
The PTSD Breakthrough
by Frank LawlisWe are facing a hidden and growing epidemic. More than a million veterans and everyday citizens have been affected with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result of a traumatic event or personal experience. And until now, there has been little understanding of how the disorder truly takes hold and how to reverse its destruction. Finally, a breakthrough approach has been discovered.
Previously PTSD was treated as a psychiatric disorder only, but new scientific research shows that biological factors play just as an important of a role, specifically brain and soft-tissue damage underlying the root causes of the disorder. The PTSD Breakthrough is the first book to describe the true causes of PTSD and provide an effective program for overcoming the disorder. There is hope.
Through the research conducted by Dr. Lawlis and his colleagues, for the first time those who suffer from PTSD, as well as their families and loved ones, will discover that this disorder can be treated and healed, and that our veterans and all who suffer from PTSD can regain true peace in their lives.
Reach for More
by David M. SzumowskiWhat should have been a normal life path of childhood, college, and military service took a major detour for David Szumowski in 1969 in Vietnam. After forty days leading his Army tank platoon, Szumowski's life changed. Whatever path in life he thought he would have, he now confronted a life without sight.
This is a memoir of one person's challenges with coping, emotional distress, finding a career, accepting the hand that was dealt, finding love and a life partner, and a successful legal career. This remarkable story of one man's resilience, perseverance, faith, and courage is inspiring. You will experience a range of emotions as you understand how one person lives with loss. Reach for More is truly an encouraging testament to faith and the human spirit!
I envisioned a steady path through life seeking success and happiness. The Vietnam War nearly derailed me from those goals. My faith, family, friendships opportunities and determination helped me to overcome obstacles and realize a satisfying life . This is my story of achievement by never giving up.
Remembering Trauma
by Richard J. McnallyAre horrific experiences indelibly fixed in a victim's memory? Or does the mind protect itself by banishing traumatic memories from consciousness? How victims remember trauma is the most controversial issue in psychology today, spilling out of consulting rooms and laboratories to capture headlines, rupture families, provoke legislative change, and influence criminal trials and civil suits. This book, by a clinician who is also a laboratory researcher, is the first comprehensive, balanced analysis of the clinical and scientific evidence bearing on this issue--and the first to provide definitive answers to the urgent questions at the heart of the controversy.
Synthesizing clinical case reports and the vast research literature on the effects of stress, suggestion, and trauma on memory, Richard McNally arrives at significant conclusions, first and foremost that traumatic experiences are indeed unforgettable. Though people sometimes do not think about disturbing experiences for long periods of time, traumatic events rarely slip from awareness for very long; furthermore, McNally reminds us, failure to think about traumas--such as early sexual abuse--must not be confused with amnesia or an inability to remember them. In fact, the evidence for repressed memories of trauma--or even for repression at all--is surprisingly weak.
A magisterial work of scholarship, panoramic in scope and nonpartisan throughout, this unfailingly lucid work will prove indispensable to anyone seeking to understand how people remember trauma.
Shadows of War
by Efrat Ben-Ze'Ev and Ruth Ginio and Jay WinterSilence lies between forgetting and remembering. This book explores how different societies have constructed silences to enable men and women to survive and make sense of the catastrophic consequences of armed conflict. Using a range of disciplinary approaches, it examines the silences that have followed violence in twentieth-century Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. These essays show that silence is a powerful language of remembrance and commemoration and a cultural practice with its own rules. This broad-ranging book discloses the universality of silence in the ways we think about war through examples ranging from the Spanish Civil War and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the Armenian Genocide and South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Bringing together scholarship on varied practices in different cultures, this book breaks new ground in the vast literature on memory, and opens up new avenues of reflection and research on the lingering aftermath of war.
Soul Repair
by Rita Nakashima Brock and Gabriella LettiniThe first book to explore the idea and effect of moral injury on veterans, their families, and their communities.
Although veterans make up only 7 percent of the U.S. population, they account for an alarming 20 percent of all suicides. And though treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder has undoubtedly alleviated suffering and allowed many service members returning from combat to transition to civilian life, the suicide rate for veterans under thirty has been increasing.
Research by Veterans Administration health professionals and veterans' own experiences now suggest an ancient but unaddressed wound of war may be a factor: moral injury. This deep-seated sense of transgression includes feelings of shame, grief, meaninglessness, and remorse from having violated core moral beliefs.
Rita Nakashima Brock and Gabriella Lettini, who both grew up in families deeply affected by war, have been working closely with vets on what moral injury looks like, how vets cope with it, and what can be done to heal the damage inflicted on soldiers' consciences.
In Soul Repair, the authors tell the stories of four veterans of wars from Vietnam to our current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan--Camillo "Mac" Bica, Herman Keizer Jr., Pamela Lightsey, and Camilo Mejía--who reveal their experiences of moral injury from war and how they have learned to live with it. Brock and Lettini also explore its effect on families and communities, and the community processes that have gradually helped soldiers with their moral injuries.
Soul Repair will help veterans, their families, members of their communities, and clergy understand the impact of war on the consciences of healthy people, support the recovery of moral conscience in society, and restore veterans to civilian life. When a society sends people off to war, it must accept responsibility for returning them home to peace.
The Strategic Student Veteran
by David CassThe college graduation rate for military veterans is unsatisfactory. While the life transition for veterans goes far beyond academics, by lessening the stress of the academic transition, the likelihood of collegiate success is significantly increased.
The goal of The Strategic Student Veteran is to help raise graduation rates amongst our nation's veterans. The reason so many college students under-perform is because they're not taught how to transition from the structured military environment to the unstructured college academic environment. The Strategic Student Veteran teaches college-bound military veterans how to make this transition and become self-reliant, successful students.
Trauma and Recovery
by Judith Lewis HermanWhen Trauma and Recovery was first published in 1992, it was hailed as a groundbreaking work. In the intervening years, Herman's volume has changed the way we think about and treat traumatic events and trauma victims. In a new afterword, Herman chronicles the incredible response the book has elicited and explains how the issues surrounding the topic have shifted within the clinical community and the culture at large.
Trauma and Recovery brings a new level of understanding to a set of problems usually considered individually. Herman draws on her own cutting-edge research in domestic violence as well as on the vast literature of combat veterans and victims of political terror, to show the parallels between private terrors such as rape and public traumas such as terrorism.
The book puts individual experience in a broader political frame, arguing that psychological trauma can be understood only in a social context. Meticulously documented and frequently using the victims' own words as well as those from classic literary works and prison diaries, Trauma and Recovery is a powerful work that will continue to profoundly impact our thinking.
Veterans Benefits For Dummies
by Rod PowersSaving veterans and their families from months of phone calls and internet searches, Veterans Benefits For Dummies outlines the various programs that the VA and other government agencies have in place as well as the procedures for filing applications, claims,and appeals for these benefits which include:
Veterans Employment Tactics
by Tom Stein and Greg WoodThings have changed, times have changed, and times are tough - especially if you're a military veteran seeking employment in today's economy. This essential guide is designed to help you succeed in your civilian job search. Written by a career military officer and a career expert, TheHireTactics introduces a methodology that includes innovative tools that go far beyond the traditional resume and cover letter. You will learn how to define your value in civilian terms and employ the strategies and tactics necessary to differentiate yourself from the competition and successfully complete your job search mission.
Learn the 4 Milestones for Civilian Employment:
Waiting for First Light
by Romeo DallaireAt the heart of Waiting for First Light is a no-holds-barred self-portrait of a top political and military figure whose nights are invaded by despair, but who at first light faces the day with the renewed desire to make a difference in the world.
Roméo Dallaire, traumatized by witnessing genocide on an imponderable scale in Rwanda, reflects in these pages on the nature of PTSD and the impact of that deep wound on his life since 1994, and on how he motivates himself and others to humanitarian work despite his constant struggle. Though he had been a leader in peace and in war at all levels up to deputy commander of the Canadian Army, his PTSD led to his medical dismissal from the Canadian Forces in April 2000, a blow that almost killed him. But he crawled out of the hole he fell into after he had to take off the uniform, and he has been inspiring people to give their all to multiple missions ever since, from ending genocide to eradicating the use of child soldiers to revolutionizing officer training so that our soldiers can better deal with the muddy reality of modern conflict zones and to revolutionizing our thinking about the changing nature of conflict itself.
His new book is as compelling and original an account of suffering and endurance as Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking and William Styron's Darkness Visible.
War and the Soul
by Edward TickWar and PTSD are on the public's mind as news stories regularly describe insurgency attacks in Iraq and paint grim portraits of the lives of returning soldiers afflicted with PTSD. These vets have recurrent nightmares and problems with intimacy, can't sustain jobs or relationships, and won't leave home, imagining "the enemy" is everywhere.
Dr. Edward Tick has spent decades developing healing techniques so effective that clinicians, clergy, spiritual leaders, and veterans' organizations all over the country are studying them. This book, presented here in an audio version, shows that healing depends on our understanding of PTSD not as a mere stress disorder, but as a disorder of identity itself. In the terror of war, the very soul can flee, sometimes for life. Tick's methods draw on compelling case studies and ancient warrior traditions worldwide to restore the soul so that the veteran can truly come home to community, family, and self.
War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning
by Chris HedgesAs a veteran war correspondent, Chris Hedges has survived ambushes in Central America, imprisonment in Sudan, and a beating by Saudi military police. He has seen children murdered for sport in Gaza and petty thugs elevated into war heroes in the Balkans. Hedges, who is also a former divinity student, has seen war at its worst and knows too well that to those who pass through it, war can be exhilarating and even addictive: “It gives us purpose, meaning, a reason for living.”
Drawing on his own experience and on the literature of combat from Homer to Michael Herr, Hedges shows how war seduces not just those on the front lines but entire societies—corrupting politics, destroying culture, and perverting basic human desires. Mixing hard-nosed realism with profound moral and philosophical insight, War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning is a work of terrible power and redemptive clarity whose truths have never been more necessary.
The Way of the Wound
by Robert GrantCountless victims of childhood abuse, domestic violence, violent crime, rape, war, life-threatening illness and natural disaster struggle with the impact of their injuries. Former ways of making sense have been injured or destroyed. The lives of many are without meaning or direct. Unless helped to integrate the significance of their traumatic wounds into more comprehensive approaches to self, life and God victims run the risk of addiction, wasted potential, numerous psychological and physical problems, as well as commitments to distorted spiritualities. Victims of trauma are asked to embark on a path of healing that mystics, shamans and mythic heroes have been walking for thousands of years. The only difference is that the path is contemporary and, therefore, potentially more conscious. Trauma provides a modern access to this spiritual path and can initiate powerful experiences of conversion. If properly supported and accompanied trauma has the power to transform all facets of reality.
The Way of the Wound lays out a path of healing, along with the central issues that survivors encounter at every crucial point along the way. This work offers direction to every victim of trauma wanting to move to the next level of healing.
Work and Disability
by Edna Mora Szymanski and Randall M. ParkerWork is a central aspect of human life in every culture and every society. In certain societies work may be a means by which individuals define themselves and/or maintain their quality of life. However, as a whole, work is the essential means by which we all attain our basic needs such as food and water.
In our modern society, persons with disability face a society in which jobs and education are not as easily accessible or attainable. Disability often complicates the delicate interrelationships between people and work. It may affect work productivity, relationships with coworkers, and relationships at home.
This third edition covers the latest in legislative background and other contextual matters regarding employment of people with disabilities; vocational theories and research related to disability; counseling interventions, multicultural issues, vocational assessment, labor market information, and accommodation of people with disabilities in the workplace; job placement and job development; outreach through business consultation; and supported employment for individuals with developmental disabilities.
The Wounds Within
by Joshua S. Goldstein and Mark I. NickersonAs America’s longest wars end, hundreds of thousands of veterans and their families struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The Wounds Within follows the case of Marine Lance Corporal Jeff Lucey, who deployed early in the Iraq War, battled PTSD after returning home, and set his family on a decade-long campaign to reform the Veterans Affairs system and end the stigma around military-related mental health issues, with the perspective of Jeff’s psychotherapist, Mark Nickerson, an internationally recognized expert on trauma treatment.
Recounting one family’s story as well as case histories of Nickerson’s veteran clients, the book explains PTSD and the methods by which it can be treated. It also explores the challenges and frustrations facing returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan—from belated reforms to overwhelmed military families to civilians who don’t know what to say beyond “Thank you for your service.”