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TagsCenter treats soldiers from World War II to those recently returned from Iraq and Afghanistan
BY KEN BRANSON
No one may ever know what motivated Major Nidal Malik Hasan to turn his gun on his fellow soldiers, but the Fort Hood massacre has escalated concern over post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) within the military. As an army psychiatrist, Hasan treated soldiers suffering from trauma. The shooting, meanwile, has worsened the condition of some soldiers with PTSD.
At Rutgers, Michael Petronko and his colleagues know firsthand the stress and psychological wounds that affect those who face war. At their Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Clinic, part of the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, they tend to those wounds every day.
One needn't to go to war to suffer from PTSD, a condition that results from witnessing or experiencing an unusually distressing event or severe psychological trauma. But few experiences provide as much trauma as war, and Petronko, a professor of psychology in GSAPP, has been treating the results of that trauma since 1978, first at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and, since 1992, at Rutgers. Some of the traumas he and his colleagues deal with are older than his clinic; some, in fact, are older than Petronko.The State and Federal PTSD Clinic focuses on combat-related post traumatic stress disorder and contracts with the New Jersey Department of Military and Veteran Affairs and the Federal Veterans Administration to serve veterans of all wars from World War II through the current conflict in Iraq.
"We still see Vietnam veterans," Petronko said. "I saw one recently who was dealing with stuff that happened 41 years ago. And I just recently started treating a guy who was with [Gen. George M.] Patton in North Africa in 1943, and had never been treated."
The clinic presently serves about 30 veterans, ranging from Patton's old soldier to veterans who recently returned from Afghanistan or Iraq - some having served in both places, while some had been deployed to one country or the other multiple times.
Seven of the clinic's patients are Rutgers students.
The symptoms of PTSD are well known, but any of them might be missed or discounted or taken as the entire puzzle, when it is really just a piece. According to Petronko, they are emotional numbing, flashbacks, depression, and sleeplessness.
Another key symptom is hyper-arousal. "You're driving down the road and watching the side of the road, not just for traffic, but for ambushes, for IEDs [improvised explosive devices]," explained Tom Morgan, the clinic's assistant director.
The cumulative effect of these symptoms, going on for months or even years, can be nightmarish, according to Petronko. "Imagine being in a fatal accident, and surviving," he said. "Now imagine that you experience the accident again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, and so on - knowing, each time, that you will experience it tomorrow."
Multiple deployments, especially among reservists and National Guards, take a particularly heavy psychological toll. Women with small children are being deployed in large numbers for the first time, Petronko said.
Young men and woman serving in the National Guard or Reserves may be deployed and leave their families at home for a year, sometimes 14 months or longer," Petronko said. "Imagine being away for that long and then coming back, knowing that you're going to be deployed again. Imagine having a 5- or 6-year-old, and it's not over. That's the kind of person that we see."
— RUTGERS FOCUS
