Full Description
This book tells the professional and personal experiences of American military psychiatrists and their colleagues in the longest conflict in American history. These highly trained men and women treat service members for the psychological consequences from their experiences in battle, including killing enemy combatants; seeing wounded and killed civilian casualties; losing their friends in combat; factoring in personal mental health needs, including psychiatric drug treatment; and potentially dealing with their own physical injuries from being shot or blown up.
The volume consists of 20 short first-person case studies from the mental health providers who have been risking their lives while treating patients in the battlefield since 9/11. Written by expert psychiatrists who have experienced these challenges directly, this texts offers both a clinical and personal account that is not found anywhere else. Topics include tips on providing psychotherapy in battle, evaluating and treating detainees in war prisons such as Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, and the unique challenges of prescribing medication to patients who are also comrades in war.
Psychiatrists in Combat is uniquely positioned to be a valuable resource for psychiatrists interested in trauma and veterans, psychologists, social workers, occupational therapists, military health personnel, and mental health professionals interested in military psychiatry.
Contents
The Road to Iraq.- Farm Boy Turned Military Psychologist: A Summary of War Deployment Experiences, Struggles, and Coping.- Someone Always Has It Worse: The Convoy to Balad.- Psychiatrists in Combat: From the Deckplates to Division.- Occupational Therapists Share Deployment Experiences from Iraq and Afghanistan.- The Most Efficient Marine.- The Purposeful Doctor.- The Iraqi Heart of Darkness: A Visit to Abu Ghraib.- The Two Sides of Modern Day American Combat: From Camp Austerity to Camp Chocolate Cake.- Zero To Sixty: From Residency to the War Zone.- Research at the Tip of the Spear.- From Battalion Surgeon to Combat Psychiatrist: Three Tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.- "Oh, The Things You Can Find".- Chronicles from the Cradle of Civilization.- To Squander the Fighting Strength? Personal.- Experiences with Preventive Psychiatry and the Dilemma of Wartime Public Mental Health.- Learning to Scale the Wall.- Shrink in the Making: Learning to Become a Psychiatrist From the War Wounded.- After the Smoke Clears.- The French Fourragère: Gore and Lore.- Leaving Our Mark.- Last of the OSCAR Psychologists in Afghanistan: An Expeditionary Model of Care Jesse.
