Military Social Work Conference

As thousands of veterans return from overseas, the University of Texas School of Social Work prepares to aid their transition back into civilian life.

54 PCMA CONVENE JANUARY 2013

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ust 69 miles north of Austin sits Fort Hood, one of the largest U.S. military bases in the world. “Many, if not most, of the people deployed to Afghanistan are coming

from there,” said Allen Ruben, Ph.D., a professor at the Uni- versity of Texas at Austin School of Social Work. In the next year, as the United States pulls more troops out

of Afghanistan, Texas will see an influx of veterans — return- ing from lengthy tours during the longest combat engage- ment in U.S. history — in need of counseling and guidance while they adjust to civilian life. They’ll arrive on the heels of military personnel who cycled out of Iraq from 2009 to 2011. In a New York Times column last spring, Timothy Egan cited a Pew study finding that more than 800,000 veterans are “re- entering society with some form of psychological trauma.” That is the impetus behind the 2013 Military Social Work

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