Caring for the US Military's Traumatized Soldiers

[xchrom]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,829390,00.html

Janice Haaken specializes in people with mental challenges. She's studied them at hospitals, in refugee camps and in prisons. A professor at Portland State University in Oregon, she has carried out research for 35 years on ways for therapists to help the mentally ill.

Recently, Haaken has shifted her focus to her own profession, to her colleagues. She's seated at her desk, as a video on her computer shows therapists talking about their fear of becoming overburdened themselves, and complaining that their profession threatens to destroy them.

These clips come from "Mind Zone," Haaken's documentary about American army psychologists who treat psychologically traumatized soldiers on the frontlines. To make the film, Haaken traveled to Kandahar, Afghanistan, with the 113th Army Combat Stress Control Unit, a unit of army doctors and therapists. The US Army's generals welcomed her there. "They wanted to show how much they're doing for their soldiers," Haaken says.

Yet the scenes Haaken plays from her documentary reveal frustration. One of the psychologists complains that he feels his real duty is not to heal soldiers but to send them right back into battle. As a therapist, he feels, it's his job to search for these soldiers' buried psychological trauma, but as an army employee, his role is to provide a quick, makeshift fix.

[saras]

1. If you heal them TOO much, they won't want to go to war anymore

"As a therapist, he feels, it's his job to search for these soldiers' buried psychological trauma, but as an army employee, his role is to provide a quick, makeshift fix."

This dilemma is as old as Freud, who switched from the liberal to the conservative side mid-career.