Interactive Open Lunch Forum: Innovative Mental Health Solutions — Today and Tomorrow
Panelists are Lily Casura, freelance writer and editor, founder of Healing Combat Trauma, and chapter author of Healing War Trauma: A Handbook of Creative Approaches; moderator Dr. David Brown, chief, Behavioral Health, Clinical Operations, Pacific Regional Medical Command, Honolulu; Greg Montgomery Jr., founder and CEO of ZenPunt 5.0, former NFL punter, and spokesperson for national suicide prevention and mental illness research; and James Kelly, M.D., a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and director, National Intrepid Center of Excellence, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Bethesda, Md.
Panelists offered insight into practical and promising medical advances and innovative solutions taking place in the field of mental health.
Diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Greg Montgomery Jr., founder and CEO of ZenPunt 5.0, a former NFL punter, and spokesperson for national suicide prevention and mental illness research, touted a holistic approach, incorporating exercise, peer-to-peer support, and communication and active listening within a family unit.
“This diagnosis is a family diagnosis,” Montgomery said. “We all have to reinvent ourselves, find a way to communicate productively, and reinvent the family dynamic, forming a support network within the family, identifying triggers, developing tools based on strengths and interests to manage emotions when they come up.”
Lily Casura, freelance writer and editor, founder of Healing Combat Trauma (
www.healingcombattrauma.com), and chapter author of Healing War Trauma: A Handbook of Creative Approaches, agreed. Mental health treatment should adapt to become a community approach, with focus on individualized care, she said.
“We have to become much more informed as a society that PTSD is a consequence of combat [and] suicide is a consequence of PTSD,” Casura said. “We need to embrace veterans of every generation and what they struggle with. … The No. 1 preventive for PTSD is social support, and when we don’t give that, we create public health consequences.”
James Kelly, M.D., a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and director, National Intrepid Center of Excellence, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Bethesda, Md., noted society needs to get past what he sees as an “artificial” distinction between military care and civilian care.
“We have to look at all of us together engaged in this process in a much more forward-thinking and integrated way,” Kelly said. “I mean [we must] truly break down the barriers and make it possible for our military to get the care that’s available in the civilian sector and for the military and what we’re learning to be incorporated more quickly into the civilian sector.”
MO
Event Sponsors
MOAA thanks all who participated in the annual Warrior-Family Symposium Sept. 12 at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, D.C. Special thanks go to the event’s corporate sponsors, without whom the symposium would not have been possible.
Sponsors for the 2013 Warrior-Family Symposium include executive sponsor USAA; patron and lunch sponsor Haven Behavioral War Heroes Hospital; gold sponsors Health Net, Lockheed Martin Corp., Northrop Grumman, UnitedHealthcare, and U.S. Family Health Plan; silver sponsors Boeing Co. and Express Scripts; bronze sponsors CUBIC, Day & Zimmerman, and Delta Dental; breakfast sponsor American Physical Therapy Association; and media sponsor
Military.com.
ON THE WEB
If you didn’t get the chance to attend the 2013 Warrior-Family Symposium, visit the MOAA Web Base at
www.moaa.org/wfs2013 for video footage of each panel and keynote speech, a special video message from hip-hop artist and veteran Soldier Hard, and a full transcript of the event.
NOVEMBER 2013 MILITARY OFFICER 57
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