Trisha Pearce has seen the emotional scars combat can inflict on veterans, and she wanted to help military personnel who served in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Pearce, a Stanwood resident and psychiatric nurse, has worked in the mental health field since 1974, either as a nurse or a counselor. Her experience with warriors’ trauma reaches back to the Vietnam era.
“I saw what happened after Vietnam and saw people who came back, and their lives were ruined,” Pearce said. “I see vets, year after year, in psych units.”
Pearce said she worries about this generation’s war veterans and active duty personnel who are serving in the Middle East. A recent RAND Corp. study found that, to date, 1.64 million U.S. service members have been sent overseas in support of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq since October 2001.
About four years ago, Pearce saw a notice for a workshop for mental health professionals interested in working with combat veterans.
From there, her involvement snowballed as she and a handful of other therapists realized that, outside of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, there weren’t free counseling services for veterans and active duty personnel who served in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
For some veterans, the fear of being stigmatized as mental cases kept them for seeking help from the VA. Of Iraq and Afghanistan vets surveyed by RAND researchers, more than a third reported a mental health or cognitive condition, such as depression or traumatic brain injury.
Of those who met the criteria for depression or post-traumatic stress disorder, 53 percent sought treatment, according to the RAND study.
“A lot of them don’t want to go on the base. They are worried it will affect their careers,” Pearce said. “There’s still quite a bit of stigma in the military community.”
Pearce learned about The Soldiers Project, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit group of psychotherapists who donate at least one hour a week to provide free counseling to active duty personnel and veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan and their families. The group offers counseling services in California, Illinois and New York.
In 2004, Pearce and Lisa Weinberg, a licensed therapist in private practice in Seattle, helped expand services to Western Washington. Some of the therapists have even continued to counsel patients when they are deployed, calling clients’ cell phones, Pearce said.
Now, Pearce spends 20 or more hours a week coordinating 30 volunteers in Washington for The Soldiers Project Northwest. The group has seven clients in Washington and hopes to expand.
“What I’d like more than anything is 100 volunteers around Fort Lewis,” she said.
Pearce doesn’t see patients herself. She said she has had requests for workshops in Spokane. If she can’t provide a therapist, she connects the client with other services or the VA.
“The Puget Sound VA has been extremely collaborative with us and has been able to get some folks into their system quickly who we couldn’t see,” Pearce said.
Since 2003, between 60 and 70 percent of the 2,000 clients at the Puget Sound VA’s Deployment Health Clinic in Seattle sought treatment for mental health issues, said Matthew Jakupcak, a psychologist at the clinic. Those statistics also include noncombat related issues such as marital and family counseling.
The Soldiers Project NW works with the VA, referring some clients and using their training manuals for therapists.
To volunteer with the project, therapists must be licensed and have malpractice insurance and regularly attend workshops with expert speakers on counseling combat veterans. One such training for therapists will be held Monday in Mount Vernon.
The workshops are important because civilian mental health professionals need to learn about the “combat mind,” as well as differences between branches of the military and the impact that can have on a veteran’s experience of the war, Pearce said.
The Soldiers Project aims to help war veterans
Frank Varga
Trisha Pearce, psychiatric nurse, helped start a branch of The Soldiers Project in the Northwest to provide free counseling and other mental health services for combat veterans and active-duty military personnel in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and their families.
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