NM gives war veterans a hand up

An innovative state-backed effort is providing veterans with needed behavioral health services

(Photo AP/CBS)

ALBUQUERQUE -- While on a road trip to Phoenix with friends about a year and a half ago, former army staff sergeant Stephen King realized cars were passing him on the freeway. A simple fact of day-to-day life for the majority of drivers in the U.S. caused an adrenaline-fueled fear to course through the 35 year old.

"Vehicles weren't allowed to pass us in Iraq," says King, who was on military leave at the time.

A friend took over the driving, but King -- who had seen bodies torn in half or decapitated-- found that sitting shotgun only raised his anxiety. King crawled into the back seat and curled into a ball.

The Iraq war had come home with him.

There are nearly 15,000 veterans in New Mexico who served in Iraq or Afghanistan, and many are confronting the stress that comes with seeing horrors that most human beings never experience -- or of living on edge 24 hours, seven days a week caused by never knowing where the danger will come from next.

Like King, about a third of those need services for post-traumatic stress disorder. Exacerbating that fact is that a large number of these veterans are living in rural areas under conditions that make traveling to the VA nearly impossible.

A new state-backed program is trying to address that situation. The New Mexico Veteran and Family Support Services program, operated by Presbyterian Medical Services, offers free services to New Mexico veterans without requiring them to visit a Veterans Affairs Department hospital.

The program started in late October of 2007 as a pilot in Sandoval County, which has the highest concentration of veterans in the state. Because of its initial success, the program will expand to locations in McKinley and San Juan counties soon, according to Chris Burmeister, the program's daily operations administrator.

The program is "very flexible and conforms to the needs of the particular veteran or family member," he adds. "Our role ranges from mental health care, informing veterans as to what services are available to them, as well as helping them with daily tasks like organizing their bills or driving them to the grocery store."

Many veterans feel put off by the bureaucratic coldness of the VA, says Burmeister. "It's very important that a veteran who is seeking out help feels acknowledged, or they may not come back. Even if we are busy or the appointments for the day are full, we make it a point to acknowledge what that person is going through, and we try to get them an appointment within a couple of days, if not the next day."

In a recent interview with the New Mexico Independent, New Mexico Secretary of Health Alfredo Vigil noted that the program is addressing a need that often isn't covered in the media extensively, which feeds the common perception that the military is not taking care of returning soldiers.

"The media often portrays how the military is not taking care of soldiers," Vigil said. "The fact of the matter is that there are a large number of resources out there for veterans. The biggest obstacle we face is making veterans aware of those services."

The unique aspect of the Veteran and Family Support Services program is its flexibility to work in a number of different capacities as well as its widened definition of family, according to Dr. Ted Testa, director of behavioral health at Presbyterian.

"We've widened the definition of family beyond that of immediate blood relatives so that we can truly address what the veteran is going through," Testa explains. "If the veteran is living with a cousin or a friend, those people are allowed to participate in counseling and therapy."

"This program is one of only 10 of its kind in the country... and we're the top one," Testa adds.

The program incorporates a range of behavioral health professionals, many of whom are military veterans. According to a New Mexico Department of Veterans Services press release:

The VFSS team is staffed with case managers, family therapists, psychiatrists, and a psychologist whose jobs it is to help identify and coordinate medical, behavioral health, substance abuse, educational, financial, and vocational providers in the veteran’s community. Using a veteran-helping veteran paradigm, the team intentionally has veterans among its clinicians and case managers.

Burmeister says that because they refer out a lot of services to the VA and other programs it's difficult to give a hard number as far as the program's capacity. "Our goal is to serve everyone that comes in and since October nearly 600 veterans have received some level of service."

The program is the only veteran's behavioral health clinic in Sandoval County, but a new veteran's medical clinic is slated to open in Sandoval county soon, where patients referred for medical treatment will go.

In addition to traditional services, VFSS also tries to factor in cultural differences. "We work with Native Americans and offer them traditional sweats and try to incorporate their cultural background into the healing process," notes Burmeister. The program also offers a curandera, a traditional Hispanic folk healer, for some of its Hispanic patients.

As a sufferer of post traumatic stress disorder, King, who lives in Rio Ranch but is currently staying with his parents in Ruidoso says "I don't think I have it as bad as some."

"I keep in touch with my soldiers, and one of them had an episode while driving, pulled over to the side of the road and locked himself in the trunk of his car. Another was set off by his wife walking around after a shower with a towel on her head; he came back to reality after he had brutally beat her. He called 911 on himself."

Burmeister seems to confirm King's understanding, saying "What people don't realize is that many veterans, because of their combat experience, won't travel over bridges or have extreme difficulty maintaining calm in congested traffic or crowded buildings."

These symptoms often cause a disconnect between veterans and the VA.

Although King had already been receiving mental health services while still in the military, he continually missed his appointments at the VA once he was out. "I'd drive up to the parking lot and I couldn't go in," he says. "The VA is a large building. After Iraq I'm not a fan of large buildings or crowded hallways. ...They assigned me to group therapy on the second floor, and I had to get in an elevator; there was no way I was doing that."

"I was gonna move to Colorado, but I found out they didn't have this kind of outreach service so I decided not to go," notes King who spent 13 years in military service with two tours to Iraq. "I saw people cut in half, people missing their heads, children and their parents slumped over and hanging out of cars... yeah, there's a lot of death over there."

One of the workers at the VA noticed that King was having issues with showing up, and she informed him about the new program in Rio Rancho. "It was a blessing," King remembers. "The VA offers services to come get you, but what they don't realize is I'm not getting in a vehicle with anybody I don't know."

He also notes that everything reminds him of being over there. "There's a lot of things that'll kind of set me off. Living in Rio Rancho, the desert really reminds me of Iraq."

One day he was stopped at a red light, recalls King, who is currently separated from his wife because of issues related to his post-traumatic stress disorder. "I heard a car backfire and I ran the red light and tried to ram that car. My wife slapped me out of it."

The small clinic size of the Rio Rancho location offers him some relief from his anxiety. "I'm at the point where I can wait calmly for about 10, 15 minutes in the waiting room."

King had a chance to have a counseling session with one of his sons recently. "It was really great. He was starting to pick up some of the irrational fears of dying that I was having, and we had a chance to really go into that."

Although King is classified as 70-percent disabled and unemployable, he says that the program has gotten him to the point where he can take college courses online and utilize his GI Bill benefits. He hopes to be able to work within the year and he says his counselor gives him homework to do in the form of getting out of the house and doing short tasks in public.

The New Mexico Veteran and Family Support Services is located at 184 Unser Blvd in Rio Rancho. The number for the Rio Rancho office is (505) 994-2772, and the statewide toll-free line is (877) 929-9797. The program's telemedicine network can also offer services from a distance if a veteran or family member is unable to make it to the clinic.

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