Carroll Commencement
Fairborn commencement
Badin graduation
Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2009 > December > 01 > Entry
Editorial: Local Fort Hood survivor, other reservists deserve hearing
Consider the case of Col. Kathy Platoni of Beavercreek.
In September, she spoke at a forum in Virginia — where top brass was also on the program — on “Coping with Unseen Injuries: From the Battlefield to the Homefront.”
She was there in her capacity as a doctorate-level psychologist and Army reservist who leads soldiers through a seven-step process in handling stress.
She’s been pushing the military to improve its handling of post-traumatic stress disorder and other psychological problems resulting from war experiences.
Less than two months after that forum, she found herself being put through an interview and screening to see how she’s dealing with the trauma she’s been through.
What happened in between was Fort Hood.
Col. Platoni was there in preparation for being sent off to Afghanistan. She was going in the same unit as the alleged shooter in the massacre that took many lives. At the time of the shooting, she was in a nearby building. She heard people screaming about shots being fired.
She found herself at the side of a friend who died from the attack. She knew five of the soldiers who died and several others who were wounded.
So the Army thought she should be screened, like other survivors. After the screening, her deployment proceeded as scheduled. The answering machine at Col. Platoni’s Centerville practice says she’ll be gone for at least 14 months.
The 30-year reservist has already served in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Now she will be heading a small unit devoted to controlling stress that stems from combat — which sounds about as easy as pacifying Afghanistan.
In the circumstances of her own story — a woman reservist called up repeatedly to help the military deal with psychological trauma, who then experiences it herself, stateside — lies a lot of what separates current wars from past American wars: more women, more reservists and more awareness of the psychological impacts of war.
A measure of how far things have come: A 2009 prime-time dramatic television series, “Mercy,” deals with a nurse who has returned from Iraq and has difficulty readjusting, difficulty talking intimately with others who don’t share her experiences.
The need for veterans to talk with others is near the heart of Col. Platoni’s concerns. She says the main necessity now is to “remove the stigma that prevents people from accessing mental health services.”
“We’re sending broken people,” she says, a reference to the multiple deployments she is so familiar with.
As the nation settles into a continuing effort in Afghanistan, with more troops than ever, there’s some good news: This country has the experience of almost a decade of war in that region.
In confronting the problems of veterans, the military needs to listen particularly to the reservists of whom it has made so much use. They know the American civilian scene particularly well, as well as the war scene.
Col. Platoni says it was a remarkable experience to find herself being psychologically screened after the tragedy at Fort Hood. It was like nothing she had been through. The experience is certainly a relevant addition to a resume.
The fact that the alleged shooter at Fort Hood is a psychiatrist will not increase the credibility of the mental health professionals as a class.
Nevertheless, some of them do have special qualifications for confronting war-zone stress.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, terrorism
Comments