New psych program to aid soldiers, vets
with MONIFA THOMAS mjthomas@suntimes.com May 17, 2011 12:46AM
Dr. Joseph E. Troiani with Adler School of Professional Psychology. | provided photo
Updated: August 30, 2011 12:16AM
For many veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the battle doesn’t end when they return home.
The federal Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that post-traumatic stress disorder occurs in roughly 11 to 20 percent of Iraq and Afghan war veterans, compared with 7 percent of the general population.
And rates of alcohol abuse and suicide have risen sharply in recent years among returning vets.
In response, Chicago’s Adler School of Professional Psychology is starting a new doctoral program for students who want to specialize in working with active-duty members of the military, veterans and their families.
Adler’s military psychology program, which starts this fall, will be the first in the country offered outside of the military’s medical school, according to Adler associate professor Joseph Troiani, a retired Navy Reserve commander who developed the curriculum with feedback from military personnel.
Students in the five-year program will take all the courses needed for a traditional doctorate in clinical psychology. Added to that will be a range of electives focusing on the psychological wounds of war and the basic structure of the military.
Course topics include combat-related post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury, the psychology of terrorism, and crisis counseling for troops responding to disaster areas.
The degree program was created at the request of Adler students who planned to either go into active duty as psychologists or to work for the VA after finishing the school’s doctoral program in clinical psychology.
One of those students was Army Capt. Mike Brennan, of Rogers Park, who is a fourth-year student at Adler and will soon start his active-duty career in the medical center at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas.
“The military culture is so much different from civilian life that you have to have some sort of understanding of what that’s like on top of what you learn in a general psychology program,” Brennan said, adding that “war trauma manifests differently than other types of trauma.”
So far, Adler has received four times as many applicants for the new program as there are open slots.
“The response has been phenomenal,” Troiani said.
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