I read your April 11 article, “A path to inner peace,” about the Pathway Home in Yountville with interest.
I am an Iraq veteran from 2003 and served with the Army’s First Armored Division, in Baghdad, Iraq, right after the war began. I was later diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from numerous incidents that occurred in theater. In fact, I served in the same area, during the same time period, as one of the soldiers quoted in the story. If you’ve ever seen the documentary “Lioness,” you can see that many women served in combat areas and were exposed to the same dangers that our male veterans face.
I took an interest in the Pathway Home as a possible residential treatment program that I could attend as an option for my combat-induced PTSD. After sending them an e-mail as to my interest in their program, this was their response:
“We are actually still trying to find funding for a women’s program. We are aware of the great need for this type of program and are working diligently to make it happen. When we do start the program though, it will be advertised at the VA, Vet Centers, military installations, and on our website.”
The response disappointed me greatly. I then looked for another residential program with a combat PTSD focus for women veterans, with no luck. Instead I had to drive 2,100 miles from St. Louis, Mo., to Long Beach, Calif., to attend an Military Sexual Trauma-focused program at the VA to treat my PTSD. (Where, I might add, we were housed with male veterans at a homeless shelter. Almost all the women in the program relapsed into addiction while we were there because of that stressor. I was only able to stay strong because of my years of yoga and meditation before ever going.)
Seven years later, I still continue to wait, like many other female combat veterans who served, for sufficient treatment for the impact that the combat experience has continued to cause in my life.
In September of 2009, I had the opportunity to serve alongside the Pathway Home’s director, Fred Gusman, on a panel on Veterans and Substance Abuse at the Council on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University in New York. I expressed my concerns to him at that time about the need for a women veterans’ program, but received a cold response. I too had turned to addiction to self-medicate my PTSD, but have now been clean and sober now for almost four years. I have been interviewed by numerous national news media (CNN, the New York Times, CBS Evening News, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch) on the same topic.
I have continued to check the Pathway Home’s website several times since then, only to see a photo of a female veteran on the website, which is disturbing to say the least, because it makes it seem as though they offer treatment to women veterans when they do not.
Not only does the American public barely recognize our female service members’ service in combat roles and who are now coming home with PTSD, but we also have a lack of Department of Veterans Affairs care for female combat PTSD treatment. To this date, more than 212,000 female service members have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, 11 percent of the total force. One hundred twenty have been killed in action and more than 600 wounded, and we can’t even get a nonprofit to offer us programs. This aids to the continued stigma and drives female veterans farther underground with worsening symptoms when their own state doesn’t care enough to treat them. How long must we continue to wait for adequate treatment?
Do our female warriors, like myself, not deserve the same respect and treatment programs that our male veterans receive?
