Therapist shortage may create strain
After Fort Hood attack, some see wars’ toll on military psychiatrists
By The Associated Press
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Published: November 8, 2009
A soldier walks by a memorial for soliders who died in foreign wars at Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas, on Saturday. AP PHOTO
WASHINGTON — Amputations. Combat stress. Divorce. Suicide. For troubled service members, military therapists are at their sides.
But with the
U.S. fighting two wars, an acute shortage of trained personnel has left these therapists emotionally drained and overworked, with limited time to prepare for their own war deployments.
An Army psychiatrist is suspected in the shootings at
Fort Hood,
Texas, and the rampage is raising questions about whether there’s enough help for the helpers, even though it’s unclear whether that stress or fear of his pending service in
Afghanistan might be to blame.
An uncle of Army
Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan said Saturday that Hasan was deeply affected by his work treating soldiers returning from war zones. "I think I saw him with tears in his eyes when he was talking about some of patients, when they came overseas from the battlefield,” Rafik Hamad said.
Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pa., a psychologist in the
Navy Reserves, said the toll is sometimes described as "compassion fatigue” or "vicarious trauma.”
"They may not see combat themselves … but they see the outcome of it and they hear the stories of it day in and day out,” Murphy said. "It can be very real when you are dealing with people’s difficulties every day.”
A military mental health task force in 2007 expressed concern about the stress on nondeployed mental health personnel because of the shortage, which it said was leading to high attrition rates.
Dr. Layton McCurdy, a psychiatrist and dean emeritus at the
Medical University of South Carolina who served on the task force, said the shortage continues with the thousands of troops needing help because of combat-related stress.
"The psychiatrists are working with more people than they have time to work with,” McCurdy said.
Doctors seeing a constant stream of troops with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder can start to have problems of their own — an issue that has not gotten enough attention, said
Dr. Allen Taylor, a cardiologist at
Walter Reed Army Medical Center for 20 years before recently moving to
Washington Hospital Center.
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