Obama Campaigns For Veterans’ Mental Health

Posted on September 1, 2012 by Team VCS

From NPR

by Scott Horsley

On Friday, President Barack Obama was at Fort Bliss, Texas, where he spoke to troops and met with military families, including some who lost loved ones in Afghanistan.

As that war winds down, the president is ordering additional help for those with invisible battle scars. As a rash of suicides has shown, mental injuries can be just as deadly as a roadside bomb.

Surrounded by soldiers in camouflage fatigues, Obama recalled his last visit to Fort Bliss, exactly two years earlier. That was the day he announced a formal end to combat operations in Iraq.

We are now seeing more deaths among our service members and veterans than we were seeing on the battlefield in Iraq and Afghanistan.

– Paul Sullivan, Veterans for Common Sense

“It was a chance for me to say, on behalf of the American people, to you and all who served there, welcome home, and congratulations on a job well done,” Obama said.

Troops from Fort Bliss were among the last to fight in Iraq, and they’re still fighting in Afghanistan. By next month, though, when the last of the Afghan “surge” troops withdraw, Obama says the U.S. will have only a third as many troops in those countries as it did four years ago. He promised additional services for returning troops as they cope with the mental damage left by those wars.

“Just as we give you the best equipment and technology on the battlefield, we need to give you the best support and care when you come home,” the president said.

Hiring More Help For Veterans

Obama signed an executive order on Friday, directing the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to hire 1,600 new mental health professionals, and to expand the capacity of its crisis line so those who are in crisis can see a counselor within 24 hours.

“This is an unexpected and very positive move in the right direction,” said Paul Sullivan, the former executive director of Veterans for Common Sense. “It’s not just a step. It’s a huge leap.”

Five years ago, Veterans for Common Sense sued the VA over inadequate care. Sullivan says there’s an urgent need for additional help. On average, 18 veterans and one active-duty service member take their own lives every day.

Need Help Now?

Call The VA Veteran Crisis Line at 1-800-273-8255.

“We are now seeing more deaths among our service members and veterans than we were seeing on the battlefield in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he says.

In addition to the extra professionals, the VA will hire 800 peer support counselors. The president has also set up a task force to recommend other ways the government can help those suffering from traumatic brain injury and post traumatic stress disorder.

Getting Veterans To Get Help

The White House says money for the additional mental health care will come from existing resources, though the president sought a 10-percent increase in overall VA funding next year.

Sullivan says the Administration and Congress should be prepared for an increased mental health care bill. More than 2 million troops have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, often for lengthy and repeated deployments.

“We know that deployment increases the risk of post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury,” he says. “So it’s going to be really important for veterans listening out there and their family members and friends to come forward and ask for help.”

The Defense Department has already been encouraging service members and veterans to seek the help they need through its “Real Warriors” campaign of video testimonials and public service announcements. Obama says that message will be amplified with a new awareness campaign that will start immediately.

“I know that you join me in saying to everyone who’s ever worn the uniform, if you’re hurting, it’s not a sign of weakness to seek help. It’s a sign of strength,” Obama said. “We’re here to help you stay strong. Army strong. That’s a commitment I’m making to you.”

The U.S. may be turning a page on a decade of war, Obama said, but its responsibility to care for the troops has only just begun.

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Obama ordering VA to add staff, see suicidal vets within 24 hours

Posted on August 31, 2012 by Team VCS

From Stars and Stripes

By Megan McClosky

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama signed an executive order Friday directing the Department of Veterans Affairs to expand mental health services and suicide prevention efforts.

The president will make the announcement today in a speech to troops at Fort Bliss, Texas, where he was also planning a roundtable with soldiers and their families.

Much of what’s outlined in the executive order are initiatives that were previously announced earlier this summer by the VA.

Obama is instructing the VA to ensure that any veteran with suicidal thoughts is seen by a mental health professional within 24 hours — a standard already set for the VA, but which the department often fails to meet.

To help the understaffed VA meet that ambitious requirement — there are areas of the country where the dearth of psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers means veterans wait months for appointments — the order directs the VA to partner with the Department of Health and Human Services to tap into community services to help meet demand. The two agencies will create 15 pilot sites in underserved areas by contracting with local facilities. They’ve also been ordered to develop a plan for rural areas, which are lacking in all health services. The plan is to include a way for areas to share mental health providers.

The VA said in June it had put together a 21-person, in-house recruiting team to work on these issues.

The executive order also reiterates a VA plan to hire more mental health care providers. However, there is a nationwide shortage and the VA has struggled over the years to lure professionals to work for them.

The VA has until June 2013 to figure out how to fix that issue with pay, loan repayment, scholarships and partnerships with community-based providers and training programs. The goal, announced by the VA in June, is to hire 1,900 mental health staffers.

The VA is also being told to increase the veteran crisis hotline capacity by 50 percent by the end of year and to develop a national 12-month suicide prevention campaign that would help connect veterans to mental health services.

“VA will work closely with our federal partners to implement the executive order immediately, and continue to expand access to the high-quality mental health care services our veterans have earned and deserve,” Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki said in a statement.

Obama’s announcement comes on the heels of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s remarks at the American Legion this week that called out the VA’s struggle to provide mental health care services as “reproachable failures.”

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Marine Corps remains focused on preventing suicides, commandant says

Posted on August 30, 2012 by Team VCS

From Stars and Stripes

In spite of all the suicide-prevention programs in place, military leaders expect 2012 to be another “tough year” as the trend of suicides in the military looks bleak, Reuters quoted Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos.

“Even with the attention of the leadership, I think all the services are feeling it,” Amos told Reuters after he delivered a speech to journalists Tuesday at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. “This year … is going to be a tough year for all the services.”

Programs and countermeasures to reduce suicides in the Marine Corps alone have decreased the number from a record high of 52 in 2009 to 32 in 2011, Reuters reported.

In July, 38 soldiers, including 26 active-duty troops, are believed to have killed themselves, the Army recently reported, setting what appears to be a grim record as the military struggles to address increasing numbers of suicides.

September is National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. The Navy, for example, is unveiling a new concept to be explored each week of September, including “building resilience, navigating stress, encouraging bystander intervention to A-C-T (Ask, Care, Treat) and reducing barriers for seeking support through counseling,” a Navy statement said Tuesday.

Pentagon leaders made suicide prevention a top priority in recent years, Reutersreported, including deploying behavioral healthcare workers to warzones and trying to reduce the stigma associated with mental health treatment.

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An Effort Aims to Use Biomarkers to Pinpoint P.T.S.D.

Posted on August 30, 2012 by Team VCS

 

From New York Times.com

By JAMES DAO

 

Is post-traumatic stress disorder underdiagnosed or overdiagnosed?

Many veterans advocates and mental health providers say it is underdiagnosed, and severely so. They assert that troops often try to mask the symptoms because they want to remain on active duty or eligible for deployment, or because they fear their careers will be ruined if they admit to psychological problems, these people say.

On the flip side, some mental health experts raise concerns that the diagnosis is often given without sufficient rigor — and that as a result, resources are expended on people who do not necessarily need them, to the detriment of those who do.

That latter view is often expressed privately because no one wants to appear insensitive to mental health problems when the military suicide rate is on the rise. Moreover, the Army is investigating whether its own doctors haveimproperly rescinded P.T.S.D. diagnoses because they were overly concerned about treatment costs.

But the reality is that many mental health experts believe both statements to be true. And the fact that there is a debate at all underscores widespread questions about the assessment tools used to diagnose P.T.S.D.

“One of the limitations of psychology is that it is based on self-reporting by the patient,” said Dr. Roger Pitman, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “Some might be motivated to exaggerate conditions to achieve benefits. We also know people are not the best reporters of their own internal condition.”

With that in mind, Dr. Pitman and a team of researchers brought together byDraper Laboratory, based in Cambridge, Mass., are seeking federal financing to begin a major project to develop a more objective system for diagnosing P.T.S.D.

The consortium’s goal will be to identify as many biological “markers” of the syndrome as possible, then use that data to create algorithms capable of pinpointing who has the disorder, and who does not.

Those “biomarkers,” as they are commonly known, would range from well-known measures of anxiety — blood pressure, sweat-gland activity and hormone levels, for instance — to more complex and obscure measures derived from DNA analysis or brain imaging from MRIs.

“Trauma can change the chemistry in your brain,” said Len Polizzotto, vice president for new programs at Draper. “We want to be able to objectively identify that. The only way to do that is to come up with this series of biomarkers that are objective assessments.”

“It’s not going to be one biomarker,” he continued. “No one will stand out. But the confluence of several, each by itself not enough to alert, will be determinative. That’s where the algorithms come in.”

Dr. Polizzotto estimated that the project would cost $50 million and take years to complete. He said the team was just beginning to apply for grants from federal agencies like the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Pentagon and the Department of Health and Human Services.

As a first step, the organization has recruited a consortium of prominent P.T.S.D. researchers from around the country, many associated with the V.A., including Dr. Matthew Friedman of the National Center for P.T.S.D., Rachel Yehuda of Mt. Sinai Hospital and Dr. Pitman, who spent 28 years working for the agency.

Those researchers have been broken into eight teams to develop test protocols in different areas, including hormones, genetics epidemiology, imagining, animal research, electrophysiology and biostatistics.

Dr. Pitman, the project’s lead medical expert, said the researchers wanted to recruit several thousand patients who had experienced trauma and then measure an array of biomarkers in them. Most of the subjects will probably be victims of automobile accidents, both civilians and military personnel.

By observing those subjects over time, the consortium hopes to determine which combination of biomarkers most accurately predicts the onset of P.T.S.D. symptoms.

The researchers say that algorithms based on extensive biomarker data will not only make diagnosis more accurate, but also allow researchers to evaluate treatments more effectively. With new treatments emerging constantly — from prescription medications to psychological therapies to alternative approaches like acupuncture, yoga and massage — such assessments are more important than ever, they say. And better assessments will make it easier to personalize treatment, mixing and matching drugs or therapies based on what works.

Dr. Pitman noted that better diagnostic tools would also enable doctors to spot more undiagnosed cases of P.T.S.D. But those tools would also help prevent overdiagnosis, he added, saying he had concerns that the word “trauma” had been trivialized and overused.

“One of our goals will be to see if we can characterize P.T.S.D. in a rigorous way that hasn’t been done yet,” Dr. Pitman said. “What we would like to do is have ways of validating the kind of trauma response that we think really is P.T.S.D., and kind that we wouldn’t consider P.T.S.D.”

Draper Laboratories began as a teaching laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, focusing on guidance and navigation technologies for the Defense Department and NASA. In 1973, after M.I.T. came under criticism during the Vietnam War for the laboratory’s work on military projects, the university spun it off as an independent, nonprofit organization, which it remains today.

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Lonely Men on Campus: Student Veterans Struggle to Fit In

Posted on August 28, 2012 by Team VCS

From the Atlantic Wire

by Alex Horton

Josh Martell doesn’t look like the popular kid anymore. His thick neck protrudes from a muscular body that once led the Preble Hornets of Green Bay to consecutive all-conference football titles. Tattoos now crawl up and down his arms; a collection of luck-themed designs pay tribute to a Las Vegas jaunt, where he won over $3,000 on a single bet at the blackjack table. The winning hand is etched on his right forearm opposite the “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign on his left.

It might have been luck that saved Martell during a patrol in Baquba, Iraq, a lush, rural insurgent paradise nestled in a river valley 40 miles northeast of Baghdad. A bomb targeting foot soldiers detonated near him during the bloody summer of 2007, when American casualties reached an all-time high. He was knocked unconscious from the blast but didn’t suffer injuries beyond a concussion. Lucky.

“Who would want to be my friend?”

Martell spent just over three years in the Army, including a 15-month tour in Iraq as an infantryman. Now 27, he has since left the military, and his second daughter was born earlier this year. He juggles his welding job and family with a full load of courses at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, where he majors in communications.

He doesn’t talk about his encounter with a jury-rigged bomb — or any war stories for that matter — with his classmates. Most of them were worrying about prom dates and acne while Josh trudged through open sewers, took sniper fire, and saw his fellow soldiers mangled and killed. He definitely doesn’t mention the time four roadside bombs detonated next to his Stryker assault vehicle in rapid succession, where each explosion felt closer to the one that would tear open the steel underbelly like a sardine can and vaporize the men inside.

Universities have long been a place where young people develop a purpose in life. But for older students with wartime experience, those lessons have already been learned.

But it’s not just the discussion of war he omits from other students. He has quarantined himself almost entirely. He shows up for class, takes notes, and leaves, most of the time without communicating with students or professors. In the first three months of his first semester at UW-GB, he never said more than a few words to anyone. “I’m almost 10 years older than everyone. I’m not a college kid partying on the weekends. Who would want to be my friend?” he told me over the phone as his own kids played in the living room.

His reclusive behavior on campus betrays the man who was once my roommate in a dilapidated Korean War-era barracks at Ft. Lewis, since renamed Joint Base Lewis-McCord, a verdant mega base that sprawls along Interstate 5 near Tacoma, Washington. His backstory seemed to be assembled from cliché high school movie plots: the big man on campus, the Type-A jock all the girls gravitated towards. Since then, the King of Preble High has transformed into an introvert, and his story is remarkably similar to those of other war veterans I spoke to for this story.

The challenge of societal reintegration after war has mystified soldiers throughout recorded history. The saying “War changes people” is a profound understatement of the issue. It also displaces the sense of belonging to any number of groups, from peers to the countrymen who stayed behind. When Odysseus returned home after 20 tumultuous years of battle and incredible journeys, a sense of unfamiliarity overtook him: “But now brilliant Odysseus awoke from sleep in his own fatherland, and he did not know it, having been long away.”

Read more…http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/08/lonely-men-on-campus-student-veterans-struggle-to-fit-in/261628/

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Study of Marine suicides getting under way

Posted on August 27, 2012 by Team VCS

From nctimes.com

By Mark Walker

 

With active-duty Marines taking their own lives at a near-record pace this year, officials are launching a long-planned study of what troops who have committed suicide were doing in the days leading up to their deaths.

Officials are also taking a deep look at the service’s“Never Leave a Marine Behind” suicide prevention program to see whether it needs tailoring.

The two actions come as the Marine Corps reported eight suicides in July, the highest number recorded this year.

Those deaths raised this year’s self-inflicted death toll to 32, the same number recorded for all of 2011. If the monthly trend continues, the Marine Corps could match or exceed the record 52 active-duty troop suicides recorded in 2009.

The “forensic” study of recent suicides is designed as a detailed examination of what the troops were doing throughout each day leading to the event.

“We’re really anxious to see what we can learn from reaching out to family members and friends and using (investigative) reports,” said Todd Shuttleworth, who oversees the Marine Corps’ suicide prevention program from the service’s headquarters in Quantico, Va.

The wealth of information the study aims to generate will help guide officials in evaluating current efforts and shaping changes or new initiatives, he said.

“We want to effectively be able to teach Marines the warning signs and how to seek help early, before a situation becomes a crisis, and teach them that it is OK to ask for help,” Shuttleworth said during a telephone interview last week.

 Read more…http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/military/military-study-of-marine-suicides-getting-under-way/article_80fa3d0f-659d-5582-b3fd-19c80c78bb20.html

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Is stigma against servicemembers hindering hiring?

Posted on August 27, 2012 by Team VCS

From Stars and Stripes

By MARK NEWMAN

With all the ribbons, flags and bumper stickers, Americans may think their service members are being treated with respect. But Iowa Workforce Development’s IowaWorks warns there is an area where our nation is falling short: the hiring of veterans.

J.R. Beamer, a veterans representative who served in the U.S. Marine Corps, says amongst veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, unemployment is more than 10 percent higher than it is in the civilian population.

“It shocks me in one way and doesn’t surprise me in another,” said Wapello County Supervisor Greg Kenning, a former member of the National Guard.

He said he understands employers want good employees who are going to be there for the company, but they need to open their eyes.

“It disappoints me that we’d have a veteran who couldn’t get a chance, even,” he said.

And that is what’s happening in some cases, said Linda Rouse, the operations director at the Ottumwa office of IowaWorks.

However, she said, a state and private business partnership is now assisting in a program to help change attitudes among employers.

Rouse said Principal Financial Group has started a program called “Hire our Heroes.” The idea is to educate other employers about the benefits of hiring veterans.

Beamer said Principal is one of the companies that gets an “A” where veterans are concerned. The “Hire our Heroes” program comes with educational material that Beamer said reasons employers give for actively avoiding hiring former combatants include fear they’ll suddenly be deployed again, that they’ll be using incomprehensible military jargon or that a combat vet will suddenly become violent due to post traumatic stress disorder.

Beamer said many of the reasons are based on partial truths. But it’s also true that many challenges can be overcome — and that “it’s worth it to the employer [due to] what veterans have to offer.”

“[Ignorance about PTSD] really stigmatized all the services,” said Kenning. “It’s a disease we don’t know enough about.”

And the old image of veterans dumped off after Vietnam had basis in fact, he saw firsthand.

“It would not be uncommon they’d leave a combat zone in Vietnam … and less than a week after you’ve been on the battlefield, you’re walking around the streets. There were no parades, nothing that would say ‘this is the end of it, fella.’”

So while employers may remember that troubling image, things have changed for the better, Beamer said.

Civilians with post-traumatic stress disorder may or may not be diagnosed. Combat vets are screened for the disorder and, he said, the Department of Defense and the VA are the nation’s leaders in treating PTSD.

While a soldier may be deployed when their country needs them, he said, there are plenty of companies, including successful companies large and small in Iowa, who hire National Guard and Reserve members who may need to deploy.

For example, Principal, Fareway and Hy-Vee all are strong supporters of the guard and reserves, he said.

The military teaches more than skills, one of Beamer’s publications states. It teaches members to push themselves, and they learn “how to learn” quickly, under pressure and in changing situations.

The stereotype of military jargon use? Well, there may be something to that, but both he and Rouse said, it’s something service members can unlearn.

“Once in a while, I still get to help out a veteran, and that feels really good,” said Rouse, a retired U.S. Marine.

One place veterans sometimes need help is in changing over to a “demilitarized” resume. Even the veterans now employed at Iowa WorkForce sometimes need to remind themselves to stop using so many abbreviations and other military habits.

Phrases like “good to go” may be part of the civilian vocabulary now, but to list knowledge, training and skills using terms like “rat rig” (the radio antenna trucks), MOS (their military job title) or OCS (school for officers) can be confusing to employers.

But, asked Beamer, is that a reason not to hire someone who has served their country? He’s hoping Hire our Heroes can achieve its mission.

“The goal is to open the employers’ eyes,” Beamer said. “Let’s break these stereotypes and give veterans a chance.”

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Three active servicemembers head to London Paralympic Games

Posted on August 24, 2012 by Team VCS

 

Stars and Stripes Published: August 23, 2012

RELATED

Navy_swimmer082312WEB Navy Lt. Brad Snyder competes at a meet sanctioned by the International Paralympic Committee in Colorado Springs, Colo., in February of 2012. Snyder, who is blind, is notified as he approaches the wall. YOUTUBE/UNITED STATES ASSOCIATION OF BLIND ATHLETES

The London Paralympic Games begin Wednesday and among the approximate 4,200 international athletes competing will be three current servicemembers in the U.S. military.

In addition to Army Sgt. 1st Class Josh Olson (shooting), Marine Cpl. Rene Renteria (soccer) and Navy Lt. Brad Snyder (swimming), 17 retired servicemembers will also represent the U.S. military during the games, which run Aug. 29 to Sept. 9.

Snyder, who lost his vision when he stepped on an improvised explosive mine last September, said swimming now reminds him of the confidence he had as the captain of his Navy swim team.

“Every time that I can go out and do something that I used to be able to do it really re-establishes my self-confidence and really that trickles over to all other avenues of life,” said Snyder during a qualifying meet in March.

Olson is an instructor at the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit where he is credited in part for the creation of a new section employing wounded soldiers; and Renteria, playing forward for the seven-a-side men’s soccer team, has scored four goals in his last four appearances for the U.S.

In all, there are 227 athletes listed on Team USA, which is one of 165 countries participating.

Snyder will compete in seven swimming events—the same number as Michael Phelps did—and noted in a recent Pentagon Channel video that he is representing the U.S. and his “fellow wounded warriors.”

“We can still represent our great country, even though it’s not on the battlefield,” said Snyder.

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Fighting military suicides with peer counseling

Posted on August 24, 2012 by Team VCS

(CBS News) The Pentagon granted a six-month extension Wednesday to a pilot call-in program for American military personnel considering suicide.

The suicide rate among both active-duty troops and reservists is alarming, and it’s increased dramatically this year.

One effort to save troubled lives is led by veterans who understand the problem all too well.

Marine reservist Tim Arora served in 2006 near Fallujah, Iraq. He saw some of the most intense fighting of the war.

Arora returned with deep psychological wounds so severe he requested a service dog for companionship and comfort.

“I was thinking of suicide pretty much on a daily basis,” Tim said. “Now it’s just how I help others with it.”

Arora works at a call center at New Jersey’s University of Medicine with 25 other veterans. It’s called “Vets 4 Warriors.” It’s a place veterans can call to talk confidentially with other vets. They get 300 calls a week here.

Arora said that being a peer counselor is good for him, adding ” it’s helping yourself, having closure on your own issues, knowing that hopefully what you’ve gone through benefited you and now can benefit someone else.”

Vets 4 Warriors website Hotline: 1-855-838-8255 Man’s best friend is a lifesaver to soldiers Army suicide widows: Too little, too late U.S. military suicide rate doubles for July About 40 percent of the callers are at risk of suicide.

Linda Bean (Credit: CBS News) “When they come home they come home to their communities. They are not coming home to army bases or military mental health centers. They’re coming home to their parents,” said Linda Bean, whose son Coleman committed suicide in 2008 after two tours in Iraq.

He killed himself on the 8th anniversary of his enlistment in the Army.

“He went to the fridge and talked to his father, and gave me a hug and a kiss and walked out the door. And the next morning we got a call that he had shot and killed himself in his apartment. And our life turned upside down,” Linda said.

Linda Bean is now an advocate for the peer counseling Vets 4 Warriors provides. The Pentagon has committed to funding this program until next spring, but bean is lobbying to make it permanent.

“We owe Coleman a duty. If we don’t stand up for these young people, who is going to do that?” Linda asked.

When the phone rings, Tim said he thinks to himself: “just take a deep breath, answer the phone. You know, the majority of us know what it’s like to go living day-to-day in fear. We don’t think you’re crazy, you know, we just want to help being one vet to another.”

The veterans are answering another call of duty to save lives

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New mobile app helps patients with PTSD through prolonged exposure

Posted on August 23, 2012 by Team VCS

The Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs have released PE (for prolonged exposure) Coach, a smartphone mobile application for use with post-traumatic stress disorder treatment. Both departments use prolonged exposure therapy as an effective treatment for PTSD. PE Coach is a free app for Apple and Android mobile devices.

Psychologists at the Defense Department’s National Center for Telehealth and Technology, known as T2, and the VA National Center for PTSD, developed the mobile app to specifically help patients with their therapy.

“PE Coach is a helpful tool that assists our service members and veterans who are between visits and in treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder,” said Dr. Jonathon Woodson, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. “We could not be more grateful to the mobile app developer and have shared this app with our military health care providers as well, and hope that many individuals who are receiving PE therapy will find it useful.”

Prolonged exposure therapy helps a patient process a trauma memory to reduce the distress and avoidance caused by the trauma. The patient revisits the memory with a therapist and as the memory is emotionally processed, anxiety decreases. The therapy also helps the patient confront avoided situations that trigger memories of the trauma.

Many psychologists providing prolonged exposure therapy acknowledge it could be more effective if patients could better adhere to their assignments between sessions.

The patient installs PE Coach on their smartphone and can record the therapy session for playback between the sessions. The app also provides an explanation of exposure therapy, assignments, explanations of PTSD and its symptoms, and a convenient way to write notes about typically avoided locations, situations and events for later discussions with their therapist.

Reger said that writing in a notebook in public places made many people feel uncomfortable. However, tapping a note on a smartphone is much easier to capture those in-the-moment feelings.

PE Coach will help users successfully adhere to PE treatment, which could improve the quality of the treatment. Reger said it was not designed to be used as a self-help tool and should not replace professional counseling.

The Defense Department and VA released a similar mobile application last year. The PTSD Coach application is a reference tool for education, tracking symptoms, self-assessments and connections to support individuals with PTSD.

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