Many veterans struggle with traditional talk-therapy treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. Trauma is often remembered as flashes of images and emotions - experiences that can be difficult to express with words alone. That’s why the Department of Defense had an app developed that lets veterans tell their combat trauma story visually, using a library of locations, characters, vehicles, objects, and symbols to assemble their panels. Its stylized, powerful representations of weapons, vehicles, explosion effects and other elements have had great results helping therapists working with veterans suffering from combat trauma.
But the experience of sexual assault or harassment while serving is actually even more likely than combat trauma to cause PTSD. That's why we're now adapting the app, called
Warrior Stories
, so that clinicians can use it with survivors of military sexual trauma. Smart Policy Works is collaborating with an illustrator to create 50 new MST-related therapy graphics that will evoke and represent what the service member experienced. They include environments (barracks, boiler room, showers), clothing (doctors, patients, military police), and objects (doors, keys, body parts).
In the coming year, we will train and certify the first group of Chicago area counselors, social workers, and psychologists to use it with MST survivors. The first 15 to sign up will get 6 CEUs and $200 for participating. Send us an email if you want to be among the first! More than 100,000 Illinois veterans are survivors of MST. Our expansion of Warrior Stories will give them a powerful means of communicating and working through the trauma experience and its aftermath, leading to greater healing.