The Difficult Return: Supporting Returning Veterans Through an Arts-Based Social Leadership Program

Abstract

Over 18.5 % of military personnel returning from war zones to civilian life suffer mental health issues that can lead to family breakdown, homelessness, and other problems. Almost 4000 Australian soldiers have returned home from active service in the last decade suffering from combat stress and mental health conditions. A 2009 Australian independent government review warned a new generation of veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and severe mental health disorders will emerge in the next 5 years, with as many as one in four likely to need mental health treatment. The Difficult Return: Arts-based approaches to mental health literacy and building resilience with recently returned military personnel and their families is a 3-year Australian Research Council funded arts project aimed at supporting the mental health and well-being of recently returned veterans in Australia, the USA, and Canada. The project combines a range of arts-based strategies to help returning veterans, including online digital films to improve awareness and help-seeking motivation, a performance project with ex-soldiers and actors, and a process-based group work program. The chapter focuses specifically on the development of the Veterans Transition Program (VTP), a partnership between Griffith University and the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. The VTP leverages the resilience and resources of veterans, providing help to participants attempting to better understand the impact of military experience on their lives. It draws on a range of psychoeducational and action-based approaches, including life review and drama enactments, to engage participants in ways of dealing with disturbing events from their lives. The chapter describes and reflects on a number of the strategies used in the VTP, for example, how drama enactments help to integrate emotion, cognition, and embodied awareness, the significance of contact when working with trauma, and the importance of a therapeutic milieu in constructing "units" of support for the veterans.