The Wounds Within

The Wounds Within
Author: Mark I. Nickerson
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2015-01-06
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1632204207

As America’s longest wars end, hundreds of thousands of veterans and their families struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The Wounds Within follows the iconic case of Marine Lance Corporal Jeff Lucey, who deployed early in the Iraq War, battled PTSD after returning home, and set his family on a decade-long campaign to reform the Veterans Affairs system and end the stigma around military-related mental health issues. Their story is told uniquely from the perspective of Jeff’s psychotherapist, Mark Nickerson, an internationally recognized expert on trauma treatment. Driven by the family narrative, and by later case histories of Nickerson’s veteran clients, the book explains PTSD and the methods by which it can be treated. With coauthor Joshua Goldstein, an award-winning author, Nickerson engages the big issues of America’s attempts to cope with the millions of returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan—from belated reforms to overwhelmed military families to clueless civilians who can’t get beyond “Thank you for your service.” The Wounds Within combines a moving and compelling human drama with national policy and a clinical explanation of how to heal veterans’ traumas. It will stand as the definitive account of PTSD in those who fought America’s latest wars, and a much-needed source of information for their loved ones.

Healing Invisible Wounds

Healing Invisible Wounds
Author: Richard F. Mollica
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2009
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0826516416

In these personal reflections on his thirty years of clinical work with victims of genocide, torture, and abuse in the United States, Cambodia, Bosnia, and other parts of the world, Richard Mollica describes the surprising capacity of traumatized people to heal themselves. Here is how Neil Boothby, Director of the Program on Forced Migration and Health at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, describes the book: "Mollica provides a wealth of ethnographic and clinical evidence that suggests the human capacity to heal is innate--that the 'survival instinct' extends beyond the physical to include the psychological as well. He enables us to see how recovery from 'traumatic life events' needs to be viewed primarily as a 'mystery' to be listened to and explored, rather than solely as a 'problem' to be identified and solved. Healing involves a quest for meaning--with all of its emotional, cultural, religious, spiritual and existential attendants--even when bio-chemical reactions are also operative." Healing Invisible Wounds reveals how trauma survivors, through the telling of their stories, teach all of us how to deal with the tragic events of everyday life. Mollica's important discovery that humiliation--an instrument of violence that also leads to anger and despair--can be transformed through his therapeutic project into solace and redemption is a remarkable new contribution to survivors and clinicians. This book reveals how in every society we have to move away from viewing trauma survivors as "broken people" and "outcasts" to seeing them as courageous people actively contributing to larger social goals. When violence occurs, there is damage not only to individuals but to entire societies, and to the world. Through the journey of self-healing that survivors make, they enable the rest of us not only as individuals but as entire communities to recover from injury in a violent world.

Wounds of War

Wounds of War
Author: Suzanne Gordon
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 465
Release: 2018-10-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501730843

U.S. military conflicts abroad have left nine million Americans dependent on the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) for medical care. Their "wounds of war" are treated by the largest hospital system in the country—one that has come under fire from critics in the White House, on Capitol Hill, and in the nation's media. In Wounds of War, Suzanne Gordon draws on five years of observational research to describe how the VHA does a better job than private sector institutions offering primary and geriatric care, mental health and home care services, and support for patients nearing the end of life. In the unusual culture of solidarity between patients and providers that the VHA has fostered, Gordon finds a working model for higher-quality health care and a much-needed alternative to the practice of for-profit medicine.

The Five Wounds: A Novel

The Five Wounds: A Novel
Author: Kirstin Valdez Quade
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 448
Release: 2021-03-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0393242846

Winner of the 2021 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize Winner of the 2022 Rosenthal Family Foundation Award Finalist for the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction • Finalist for the 2022 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel • Finalist for the 2022 Aspen Words Literary Prize • Finalist for the 2022 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction One of NPR's Best Books of the Year • A Publishers Weekly and Library Journal Best Book of the Year in Fiction • A Kirkus Reviews Best Fictional Family of the Year • A Booklist Top Ten Book-Group Book of the Year • A Goodreads Choice Awards Best Debut Novel Nominee From an award-winning storyteller comes a stunning debut novel about a New Mexican family’s extraordinary year of love and sacrifice. "Masterly…Quade has created a world bristling with compassion and humanity. The characters and the challenges they face are wholly realized and moving; their journeys span a wide spectrum of emotion and it is impossible not to root for [them]." —Alexandra Chang, New York Times Book Review It’s Holy Week in the small town of Las Penas, New Mexico, and thirty-three-year-old unemployed Amadeo Padilla has been given the part of Jesus in the Good Friday procession. He is preparing feverishly for this role when his fifteen-year-old daughter Angel shows up pregnant on his doorstep and disrupts his plans for personal redemption. With weeks to go until her due date, tough, ebullient Angel has fled her mother’s house, setting her life on a startling new path. Vivid, tender, funny, and beautifully rendered, The Five Wounds spans the baby’s first year as five generations of the Padilla family converge: Amadeo’s mother, Yolanda, reeling from a recent discovery; Angel’s mother, Marissa, whom Angel isn’t speaking to; and disapproving Tíve, Yolanda’s uncle and keeper of the family’s history. Each brings expectations that Amadeo, who often solves his problems with a beer in his hand, doesn’t think he can live up to. The Five Wounds is a miraculous debut novel from a writer whose stories have been hailed as “legitimate masterpieces” (New York Times). Kirstin Valdez Quade conjures characters that will linger long after the final page, bringing to life their struggles to parent children they may not be equipped to save.

Healing the Wounded Child Within

Healing the Wounded Child Within
Author: Ricky Roberts
Publisher:
Total Pages: 138
Release: 2018-04-16
Genre:
ISBN: 9780692089248

Healing the Wounded Child Within takes you on a journey of self-reflection to help you stop repeating the negative cycles that may be holding you back. By healing wounds from your past, you can free yourself from distractions that prevent you from living the peaceful, productive, and fulfilling life you deserve. Through his own personal findings and failures, Ricky Roberts III has created this guide for healing old wounds, to serve as a reminder that we can all free ourselves from prior hurt, struggles, and mistakes. This self-reflective book will take you through exercises and reflections, encouraging you to address hurt from your past, to help cultivate mindsets and practices that will bring out the best in who you are today.

Wounds in the Heart

Wounds in the Heart
Author: Javier Schlatter
Publisher: Scepter Publishers
Total Pages: 93
Release: 2017-03-31
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1594172269

To err is human. But because we are social beings, our mistakes often harm others in small and not-so-small ways. We have all given or received wounds that need the healing power of forgiveness. This is easier said than done, however. Many would like to forgive, but just can’t seem to do it. And they continue to suffer the bitterness and the lack of peace that comes from unforgiven injuries. In Wounds in the Heart, Dr. Javier Schlatter leads us out of this conundrum and into a deeper understanding of forgiveness and its importance in our lives. He explains what forgiveness is, what it is not, and how to experience its healing power in our lives. He also looks at the impact of forgiveness on health and the keys to forgiveness in marriage. His insights are practical but also provide a deeper understanding of forgiveness that goes well beyond a superficial self-help book. Dr. Schlatter is Assistant Director of the Department of Psychiatry and Medical Psychology at the University of Navarre Medical Clinic. He is the author of several books on anxiety and stress and is a specialist in emotional disorders and the biological basis of depression and phobias.

Signature Wounds

Signature Wounds
Author: David Kieran
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 543
Release: 2019-04-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1479824003

The surprising story of the Army’s efforts to combat PTSD and traumatic brain injury The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have taken a tremendous toll on the mental health of our troops. In 2005, then-Senator Barack Obama took to the Senate floor to tell his colleagues that “many of our injured soldiers are returning from Iraq with traumatic brain injury,” which doctors were calling the “signature wound” of the Iraq War. Alarming stories of veterans taking their own lives raised a host of vital questions: Why hadn’t the military been better prepared to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI)? Why were troops being denied care and sent back to Iraq? Why weren’t the Army and the VA doing more to address these issues? Drawing on previously unreleased documents and oral histories, David Kieran tells the broad and nuanced story of the Army’s efforts to understand and address these issues, challenging the popular media view that the Iraq War was mismanaged by a callous military unwilling to address the human toll of the wars. The story of mental health during this war is the story of how different groups—soldiers, veterans and their families, anti-war politicians, researchers and clinicians, and military leaders—approached these issues from different perspectives and with different agendas. It is the story of how the advancement of medical knowledge moves at a different pace than the needs of an Army at war, and it is the story of how medical conditions intersect with larger political questions about militarism and foreign policy. This book shows how PTSD, TBI, and suicide became the signature wounds of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, how they prompted change within the Army itself, and how mental health became a factor in the debates about the impact of these conflicts on US culture.

Invisible Wounds of War

Invisible Wounds of War
Author: Marguerite Guzman Bouvard
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2012-07-24
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1616145544

There’s no real homecoming for many of our veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They may go through the motions of daily life in their hometowns, but the terrible sights and sounds of war are still fresh in their minds. This empathic, inside look into the lives of our combat veterans reveals the lingering impact that the longest wars in our nation’s history continue to have on far too many of our finest young people. Basing her account on numerous interviews with veterans and their families, the author examines the factors that have made these recent conflicts especially trying. A major focus of the book is the extreme duress that is a daily part of a soldier’s life in combat zones with no clear frontlines or perimeters. Having to cope with unrecognizable enemies in the midst of civilian populations and attacks from hidden weapons like improvised explosive devices exacts a heavy toll. Compounding the problem is the all-volunteer nature of our armed forces, which often demands multiple deployments of enlistees. This results in frequent cases of post-traumatic stress disorder and families disrupted by the long absence of one and sometimes both parents. The author also discusses the lack of connectedness between civilian society and military personnel, leading to inadequate healthcare for many veterans. This deficiency has been highlighted by the urgent need to treat traumatic brain injuries in survivors of explosions and the high veteran suicide rate. Bouvard concludes on a positive note by discussing some of the surprising and encouraging ways that the chasm between civilian and military life is being bridged to help reintegrate our returning soldiers. For veterans, their families, and especially for civilians unaware of how much our soldiers have endured, The Invisible Wounds of War is important reading.

Sacred Wounds

Sacred Wounds
Author: Teresa B. Pasquale
Publisher: Chalice Press
Total Pages: 185
Release: 2015-10-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0827235399

Trauma therapist Teresa B. Pasquale offers healing exercises, true-life examples, and life-giving discussion for anyone suffering from the very real pain of church hurt. Pasquale, a trauma survivor herself, understands the immeasurable value of our wounds once we've acknowledged them and recovered in community. That's why the wounds are "sacred," and the hope this book offers is a powerful message to anyone suffering from this widespread problem. This book explores the nature of emotional wounds, trauma, and spiritual hurt that come from negative religious experience. Some of the features are: Stories from a wide range of persons hurt by negative religious experience Healing and contemplative practices to help readers explore their own spiritual story and practical ways to move towards personal healing A journey through the experience of trauma in religious settings and how it is both relatable to other forms of trauma and distinctive -- outlining both facets An exploration of the author's own personal and professional understanding of hurt, trauma, PTSD, and the power of resiliency and healing

HEALING THE WOUNDS

HEALING THE WOUNDS
Author: David Hilfiker, M.D.
Publisher: Pantheon
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2013-05-08
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0307831833

Healing the Wounds is the most revealing book ever written by a doctor about his own profession. In it, David Hilfiker breaks the code of silence surrounding the everyday practice of medicine and gives is a dramatically different personal account of how the family doctors gets by in a world of spiraling information and high anxiety. Drawing on his years of rural and urban experience, Dr. Hilfiker lets us all know what it really feels like to be a doctor. What do you do when you make a serious medical mistake? Is it enjoyable to play God? What do you say to a patient who wants reassurance when the essence of diagnosis is uncertainty? What about money? What happens when a patient is taking forever, your waiting room is full, and you want to get home? Dr. Hilfiker uses incidents from his own practice to examine many of the kinds of behavior for which doctors are criticized—aloofness, authoritarianism, lack of caring, and money. With compassion for doctor and patient alike, he shows how the stresses of medical practice lead to a climate of misunderstanding and hostility in which the goal of healing is the first casualty. Never before have we heard the voice of the doctor ever American is most likely to meet—the family doctor—telling the often painful truths of medical practice. A book for the medical community and the lay person alike, Healing the Wounds is a powerful exploration of what frustrates doctors (and infuriates patients) and what might be done about it).