Friday, June 22, 2007
A Kentucky VA Leading in PTSD Treatment
The Cincinnati Post - War of nerves: "When they got her out, they moved her first to New York and then to the Fort Thomas residential women's clinic in Northern Kentucky, one of six in the huge VA system. Blackwood was admitted so quickly because Bowersox knows the director. When he called, there happened to be a vacancy.
'I don't know whether I could do this without my friends helping me,' Blackwood said.
Fort Thomas offers intense, highly personalized care, and its program has proved to be one of the most effective in the country, the other side of the spectrum from what Blackwood experienced in Washington. The grounds hug a hill high above the Ohio River and are surrounded by hiking trails. Only 10 patients are admitted every seven weeks. They attend 25 hours of group sessions and two to four hours of individual therapy each week. The program's director, Kathleen Chard, is considered to be in the vanguard of PTSD treatment and will be training mental-health clinicians across the country for VA over the next 15 months."
For one year when I was young, I lived across the street from this very small and old installation. It shocked me when I was older to learn that there was real work going on there. We occasionally saw weekend warriors in humvees and things, but it was a seemingly out-dated place to me as a kid. There is a great park and a beautiful overlook to the Ohio River, but I didn't think of it as much more than that. Even as a teenager, I would go to dances at the Canteen. Again, just a gathering spot, but very little more. My ten year high school reunion was held on the grounds even. Other than the VA hospital which stands just behind the pre-school my parents sent me to and the very few homes that dot the acreage, it just seemed desolate and lonely. I have always pictured that area in black and white, save the very green grass. You know, even the homes seemed quiet. People lived in them, both the small homes as well as the larger officer's homes, but I remember it as without much life. In my mind, as I was reading the article, without realizing it, the VA, that was once a mere backdrop for my pre-school naptimes had a light shining from it.
'I don't know whether I could do this without my friends helping me,' Blackwood said.
Fort Thomas offers intense, highly personalized care, and its program has proved to be one of the most effective in the country, the other side of the spectrum from what Blackwood experienced in Washington. The grounds hug a hill high above the Ohio River and are surrounded by hiking trails. Only 10 patients are admitted every seven weeks. They attend 25 hours of group sessions and two to four hours of individual therapy each week. The program's director, Kathleen Chard, is considered to be in the vanguard of PTSD treatment and will be training mental-health clinicians across the country for VA over the next 15 months."
For one year when I was young, I lived across the street from this very small and old installation. It shocked me when I was older to learn that there was real work going on there. We occasionally saw weekend warriors in humvees and things, but it was a seemingly out-dated place to me as a kid. There is a great park and a beautiful overlook to the Ohio River, but I didn't think of it as much more than that. Even as a teenager, I would go to dances at the Canteen. Again, just a gathering spot, but very little more. My ten year high school reunion was held on the grounds even. Other than the VA hospital which stands just behind the pre-school my parents sent me to and the very few homes that dot the acreage, it just seemed desolate and lonely. I have always pictured that area in black and white, save the very green grass. You know, even the homes seemed quiet. People lived in them, both the small homes as well as the larger officer's homes, but I remember it as without much life. In my mind, as I was reading the article, without realizing it, the VA, that was once a mere backdrop for my pre-school naptimes had a light shining from it.
