The VA Is Training Clergy Members To Recognize Veterans With Mental Health Issues

Speaker 1: 00:00 The department of veterans affairs is reaching out to clergy members around the country to help veterans in need. The agency is holding sessions to train religious leaders to look for signs of psychological issues among veterans in their congregations. Carson frame of the American Homefront project reports from San Marcos, Texas. Speaker 2: 00:20 Barrington. Malcolm is a clergy training instructor with the VA and an army veteran. Since separating from the service, he struggled with suicidal thoughts, but he says it can be hard to seek help Speaker 3: 00:31 as a veteran, as a military person. I'm never comfortable speaking with mental health professionals about my mental Charles and I do have them. Speaker 2: 00:39 Malcolm has developed certain tools to help him stay grounded tools. He teaches other religious leaders through the VA's community clergy training program. Speaker 3: 00:47 So when I conduct my groups at the hospital, I let them understand that, look, what I'm sharing with you is what I'm using to help me stay alive. Speaker 2: 00:57 At a recent training at the central Texas medical center, about 20 clergy members and veteran advocates, swaps strategies they've used to support those in need. One of the attendees. Mark George is a chaplain at the Caldwell County jail in Lockhart, Texas. There he sees a lot of incarcerated veterans in extreme distress. Speaker 4: 01:15 They're normally telling me they're having dreams of suicide and they see themselves dying this way or that way and I really don't get into questions at that point. I just let them talk. Speaker 2: 01:27 These kinds of incidents happen a lot. Speaker 4: 01:28 Just last week I had an individual tell me that I won't be here next Tuesday. Yeah, well where are you going to go? I mean it's, you're going to be here for like two years from what I can tell. Well, I, we just won't be alive next Tuesday. Speaker 2: 01:42 Malcolm steps in with feedback. Keep them talking. He says, don't leave them alone. Call the VA suicide hotline. That's the crucial part. That's the good part of our job is to be able to really listen and hear, hear what is not being said and don't be scared to ask to list. Use your ignorance to inform you. Since 2010 the VA has been offering trainings like this to help clergy become more familiar with veterans issues. Things like transition related problems, traumatic brain injury, PTSD, suicide and military sexual trauma. It costs the department a little over a million and a half dollars each year and operates in 47 States. Chaplain Larry Collins is another clergy training instructor in Texas and served in the air force and Navy. He says, veterans come to clergy and clergy come to him with questions. We get questions about how [inaudible] Speaker 3: 02:31 difficult it is for veterans to transition back into the civilian sector after deployments. The specifics of symptoms related to PTSD, they want to know Speaker 2: 02:44 more about moral injury, but mainly from a practical standpoint. What can we do? The training offers tips on how to reduce veterans' isolation by creating supportive networks and empathize with veterans who may be having a stress reaction. It also the major differences between military and civilian culture. Veterans service organizations and local mental health providers are usually looped into the trainings. Giving clergy places they can refer out if necessary. Colin says veterans value the anonymity and acceptance offered by clergy. In part because there's stigma around mental health issues. Speaker 3: 03:18 One of the things that we talk about is is this idea that spiritual care in its essence is total acceptance. It's non-judgment and I believe that that many of our veterans know that Speaker 2: 03:32 for Barrington, Malcolm, the other VA instructor, one of the most important things for clergy to realize is that they themselves can connect with the veterans even if they haven't worn the uniform or been in combat. The first part I believe is for clergy to open themselves to become vulnerable is recognized. I'm a human being. I hurt too. I don't live up here and the sky without pain. I struggled too. The VA training seem to be making a difference. Early outcomes data showed that clergy who went through the program were more likely to make referrals to the VA and other mental health providers. Attendance has risen over the last nine years with more than 1500 participants in 2018 Speaker 1: 04:13 joining me is reporter Karsten frame with the American Homefront project. Carson, welcome to the program. Thank you so much for having me. Does the VA's community clergy training program focus its efforts and communities with a big military presence like here in San Diego. Speaker 2: 04:30 The program actually started with a heavy emphasis on veterans in rural areas. Um, the thinking was in places that have less mental health infrastructure or less access to VA facilities, that clergy were playing an important role like as counselors and community leaders. Um, and that that was putting them on the front lines of caring for veterans in their communities. Um, that's still the case now, but the program has kind of expanded to include more urban areas too. Um, because they're centrally located and because veterans often do seek counsel from clergy regardless of what type of area they're in. Um, unfortunately I can't really speak directly to San Diego in terms of whether they've done any trainings there yet. Uh, but I imagine, I would imagine so. Speaker 1: 05:12 How do various clergy members get involved? Are they recruited or do they volunteer to join the program? Speaker 2: 05:19 So, so there are a couple of ways that people can get looped into these trainings. And I should point out first that the program doesn't restrict itself to just clergy. Uh, they're open to, um, lay people in the community, healthcare providers, VSS and so on. Um, but in a general sense, the program gets its participants through a combination of what you're saying, recruitment, um, and then requests from the field. So, um, the CCTV chaplain instructors each have these like catchment areas and they target rural pockets within those. So they'll speak at ministerial gatherings and things and find basically like a local champion who will help them organize a training. The VA also gets event requests from the field. Like oftentimes veterans will hear about the program on a new source or a website or from others who've attended and those folks will contact the VA and then the VA will send out a chaplain who's in that area. And if they have no one covering a particular area, they will dispatch somebody to do the training. Um, but, but otherwise it's all, it's all just kind of word of mouth. People being impressed by the program and, and looping others in. Speaker 1: 06:18 Clergy members are familiar with trying to help people through their troubles. I know that, but they are not trained mental health professionals. Is that a potential problem for this program? Speaker 2: 06:29 Um, I could definitely see why you would ask that. And it was a question that I had to going in. I mean, one of the mantras that I heard repeated at the training was when in doubt refer out and the message seemed to be, you know, acknowledge your limitations and moments of crisis. Like if you need backup call for backup but stay connected to that veteran, keep him or her talking, stay close by basically. Um, but in terms of like a practical application, I mean the next suggestion was used usually to call the veteran's crisis line and have them walk you through next steps are to call the police. Um, but as you're, as you're suggesting, there is kind of a cone of uncertainty there when it comes to the correct response to someone in crisis. Because I'm not sure people in general or, or clergy, you know, always understand or acknowledge what their limitations are. So I think that's a, a really interesting point. Speaker 1: 07:17 How does this program help the families of veterans who are struggling? Speaker 2: 07:21 The program has a real emphasis on educating entire congregations about the challenges of deployment or the, the cultural realities of military life. And that can be, that can be when service members transition out. Um, a lot of different things. I think one of the primary goals is to make sure that veterans and their families have someone that they can go to, um, especially if they're feeling alienated or hopeless and, you know, preferably someone who isn't completely unfamiliar with how the military functions and what the fallout from service can look like, whether that's a mental fallout, physical fallout, spiritual fallout. In terms of reaching family members, the VA instructors usually have suggestions, like they'll create support groups or organize veterans specific events. Um, they'll offer daycare coordinate services to take some of the pressure off. But one of the things I heard repeated was, um, the importance of, of clergy, perhaps giving sermons that display empathy for military people and families and a working knowledge of that culture. Um, the, the thought is that support at any level ripples back to the veteran and through the community. Speaker 1: 08:23 One of the menu interviewed in the report, the VA mental health chaplain, he had talked about struggling with continual thoughts of suicide himself and says he's developed a range of tools to help him stay grounded. I wondering, did he share with you any of the ways he copes with those thoughts? Speaker 2: 08:42 He didn't, he didn't really parse out which tools from the training were really specific to him. Um, I got the sense that in some ways he was a pretty private person, but he did share some stories from his own life. Um, especially the segment about moral injury. Um, he, he kind of, he talked a lot about the importance of feeling spiritually connected and being part of a community and being of service to others. I think those things really gave him a sense of meaning and purpose and rootedness. Um, and that, that meaning making is a big part of the program itself. Sort of like how do I reintegrate into the civilian world? What does that look like? What does my moral code look like now that was sort of, uh, something that he repeated. Speaker 1: 09:22 And how was the VA measuring the success of this program? The VA does internet Speaker 2: 09:26 based a followup surveys with as many of the clergy trainees as they can reach. And I think it's usually between six months and a year after they've done the training. Um, they measure things like the number of referrals made by chaplains to mental health providers. Um, whether clergy are feeling more comfortable working with veterans in the military, um, things like that. And also whether the clergy or reporting, you know, using the, the training materials in an active way. Um, so I think so far they've done about 500 trainings since the program started in 2010 and there's another, um, kind of followup data set that they're producing in terms of, uh, outcomes. Speaker 1: 10:01 I've been speaking with reporter Carson frame with the American Homefront project. Thank you so much. Thank you. This story was produced by the American Homefront project, a public media collaboration that reports on American military life and veterans funding comes from the corporation for public broadcasting.