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Souls Of Honor Helps Vets, Families With PTSD, Suicide Prevention
Group Seeks To Help Vets With Mental Health Challenges
Ron Worthey Sr. is a veteran who struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder.
What he's found to be the most helpful tool for coping with PTSD is actually quite simple, he said.
"The most helpful thing that I have ever found is such a simple thing, and it’s helping other veterans," Worthey said.
Worthey is president of Souls of Honor, a veterans support group in Wausau. He's volunteered at the Veterans Home At King talking to veterans struggling with PTSD.
About a month ago, he met with the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs to kick off the Zero Veteran Suicide Initiative, which focuses on the families of veterans.
"We want to educate family members, spouses, because we need the veteran to be a little more understood here," Worthey explained.
He said often family members think the veteran in their life has changed or become more negative while away at combat.
The problem starts in combat training, he said, where soldiers learn to suppress all emotions.
"What happens with PTSD is you've tabled all your emotions, you've put them in the back of your mind where they don't come out, but the only emotion you can't table is anger," he explained.
Worthey went on to say it takes little to upset a vet suffering from PTSD, which is why family members might be confused or think the vet has changed.
Another reason training is important is there are so many different signs of PTSD. One veteran may seem happy and jubilant one day while another might completely withdraw and avoid leaving the house.
"There's so many different variables in between, that's why we need training ourselves. ...It can go from one extreme to the other," Worthey said.
In addition to pushing the VA towards family education, Souls of Honor created PTSDA, modeled after Alcoholics Anonymous. It's a group run by combat vets for combat vets.
It started with three or four members and is up to 15 after only four meetings. The group is essentially veterans relating to other veterans, Worthey said.
"We can actually identify what the other person is talking about, because there's no one in that room that hasn't dealt with the same emotions and trials that the person next to them has," he said.
The most important thing for veterans who are struggling with PTSD is to surround yourself with like-minded people.
"You think there's something wrong with you when you have PTSD, you struggle every day with, 'Nobody understands me,' but there are people out there that do understand you because they're all dealing with the same situation," he said.
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