Internal Pentagon documents indicate last year children of U.S. troops sought outpatient mental health care 2 million times - double the number at the start of the Iraq war, according to The .
This information comes as no surprise to Tracy Kehrer, a mother of four teenagers whose husband is now on his fourth deployment, serving with Gen. Ray Odierno, commanding general of Multi-National Force in Iraq.
The military has transformed, but families have not and there is no social structure in place to raise families who are facing multiple deployments in the future, Kehrer said.
“Families are exhausted . . . they’re still tough, but the kids are starting to check out,” she said. “These kids are not soldiers.”
Kehrer and her family participate in Scott & White’s Project Home Front.
Project Home Front is a program made possible by a grant awarded to the medical center by the Dallas Foundation’s Texas Resources for Iraq-Afghanistan Deployment (TRIAD) Fund to help address the unmet mental health needs of family members of military personnel.
Maxine Trent, a licensed psychotherapist, is coordinator of the program.
When Project Home Front began in January 2008, its goal was to provide 900 client contacts in 24 months. Fifteen months into the project the program has chalked up 3,287 face-to-face client contacts. Individuals are seen multiple times and each visit is considered a client contact.
Project Home Front began with two clinicians and now there are four, along with the addition of interns.
The reason it is so successful is because it’s confidential, Kehrer said, reporting no names or Social Security numbers of its clients, plus there are no limits on the number of times an individual can see a therapist.
The Army, she said, has the Military Family Life Consultant Program whose counselors can meet with a client six times, Kehrer said.
“That’s a Band-Aid on a sucking chest wound,” she said.
Trent said she found out in the last couple of weeks, the Army is increasing the number of those counseling sessions to 12.
“The one thing these kids need, including mine, is one secure attachment and they don’t even have that,” Kehrer said. “Mom, dad, grandparents are gone. They have to attach, detach, attach, detach.”
During the first and second deployment the family pulls together, but the exhaustion of single/married parenthood takes its toll and the children begin to resent the parent at home, she said.
Military families have been at an operational tempo since Sept. 11, 2001, and children begin to question the burden placed on their soldier parent, Kehrer said.
“We need counseling for our losses,” she said. “We don’t need money, we don’t need houses.”
Trent, Kehrer said, is her family’s counselor and has empowered the family in multiple ways. Trent not only counsels Kehrer, but also serves as a confidant to her four teenagers.
“It hurts and it’s going to keep hurting and we need clinicians who will recognize and honor our losses . . . give us permission to cry,” she said.
There are three components of Project Home Front - clinical, research and training.
The clinical portion of the project is direct services; i.e., treatment that dovetails with programs on post that provide services to families, Trent said.
The research component is the collection of clinical data, which includes a retrospective population description, she said. This could provide information on best practices for the military service population.
Training will include taking Texas A&M College of Medicine Health Science Center residents and fellows through Lt. Gen. Ricky Lynch’s Resiliency Campus on Fort Hood - a program that helps soldiers and families deal with the stresses endured due to deployments.
The purpose of the training would be to educate and imprint the military culture on the next generation of psychiatrists, Trent said.
“This is so needed because this is an issue that won’t go away,” Trent said. “We’re headed to Afghanistan and we promised them 10 years. Alexander the Great failed there, Russia failed there and I don’t know how we’re going to do, but I can promise you we’re going to be sending these already tapped families into further deployments.”
Trent said the experience working with the military has been an education.
“What the kids have taught me is that no matter how much we try to protect them from the realities of war, there really isn’t a curtain, they know what’s going on,” she said.
Military families have ways of bouncing back, Trent said.
“For the most part, kids are so resilient,” she said. “If the family system is gung-ho, communication is good and needs are being met, deployment is a ripple not an earth-shattering event. For some kids though, it’s a big darn deal and they really do struggle.”
Fort Hood has implemented some cutting-edge programs for families and soldiers.
The interest of first lady Michelle Obama in military families has probably opened up some pockets and doors, and programs are flourishing that might not have before, Trent said.
“I think they are doing everything they can do,” Trent said.
There are still concerns about how seeking mental care might affect a military career, she said, but directives from the Department of Defense state there is no stigma attached to seeking the help.
The challenge is to change people’s perception, Trent said. If people see something like seeking mental health care as a threat, they are less likely to seek services.
“With four or five deployments it’s not if you are going to have post traumatic stress, it’s when,” Trent said. “All of the military is embracing that.”
