As in my last post about suicide prevention, I think that peero to peer is probably the most underrated aspect of most treatments. The modalities often center on an ‘expert’ who has no expertise in combat, at least in the US.
Military chaplains who have deployed to war zones themselves have been ‘captured’ by the military inasmuch (from my admittedly small interaction with them from my time in the military) they view their job giving service members the spiritual ammunition to keep them on the front fighting rather than sincerely addressing their moral concerns. The military would report that most applications are approved, but the part they don’t tell you is that approval percentages decline during war-time, and by decline I mean from 80% approval during peace times, down to 50% or less during war times. They perform this sleight of hand by having government accountability office (GAO) studies limit the study periods to narrow bands of time, such as 5 years rather than have them look holistically across a wide period of time such as 1960 to present. Yes, there are problems with reliable data for some of those periods, but if you search hard enough, you’ll find a number of different GAO studies (see this one, for example) that study different time periods and could string them together in a cohesive way that provides a larger picture. Perhaps I will do that in a future post. The other thing that the military is quick to point is that the numbers of formal applicants is, admittedly, small. However, these are the people who are truly in absolute crisis, for to take such a step can mean tainting your official record for life which could foreclore future job or career paths.
Anyhow, back to the main subject of this post. This article brings together veterans to build wheel chairs for kids in developing countries.
Through the contributions, disabled veterans become a contributor opening up a wider social network and community.
https://longmontobserver.org/lifestyle/reach-out-and-care-healing-while-helping/
And their mission is:
The mission of ROC Warriors is: To empower wounded Veterans with MTBI, PTS, and Moral Injury by providing them with the tools and motivation to adapt, overcome, and move forward with a purpose driven life that leads to a self sustaining future.
https://longmontobserver.org/lifestyle/reach-out-and-care-healing-while-helping/
They also provide clinical/therapeutic support which is important but often times becomes the core. Here it seems they have the balance right: peers first and therapy second.