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What Kinds Of Services Do College Students Who Are Also Veterans Need And Why?

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Matthew Smith (fourth from right) joins other Veterans and first responders who were recognized at an Oct. 21 college football game at California Memorial Stadium for helping the state combat wildfires. Smith helped transport supplies to field hospitals that were gear up up in Santa Rosa, and bundled for infectious-disease experts from UC-Berkeley to speak with patients.

Navigating the higher feel

Veterans face challenges in college education not seen by other students

October 26, 2017

By Mike Richman
VA Inquiry Communications

Matthew Smith in Haditha, Iraq, in 2006. (Photo courtesy of Matthew Smith)

Matthew Smith in Haditha, Republic of iraq, in 2006. (Photo courtesy of Matthew Smith)

Matthew Smith in Haditha, Iraq, in 2006. (Photo courtesy of Matthew Smith)

When asked how he's doing, Matthew Smith is quick and to the point.

"I'grand living the American dream," he says. "I'm an American, and I go to higher."

Smith, a Marine who did two tours in Iraq and fought in the second battle of Fallujah in 2004, is a senior at the University of California, Berkeley. He majors in social welfare and has a grade bespeak average of 3.66. Having battled PTSD, he is aiming for a career focused on counseling Veterans to help them overcome struggles in life.

Smith is one of nigh iii million post-ix-11 service members who take returned home. Most a third of them are attending college using U.Southward. government benefits equally function of their transition back to noncombatant life.

The higher experience presents challenges for Veterans unlike those facing traditional students. Researchers have found higher rates of health-risk behaviors, such equally substance abuse, and psychological disorders, such as PTSD, among Vets in college, compared with their peers without armed forces experience. Studies have also cited problems for Veterans in adjusting to campus life and interacting with students.

One of the more than informative studies appeared in January 2017 in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry. The study not but identifies and elaborates on the potential difficulties that Vets confront in higher didactics, simply also makes recommendations for facilitating their successful integration. The research focuses on post-9-11 Vets.

Dr. Brian Borsari, a clinical psychologist at the San Francisco VA Wellness Care Organisation, was the study's lead researcher. He became inclined to pursue the research when he worked in the PTSD clinic at the Providence VA Medical Center in Rhode Island from 2007 to 2013.

"There's just a huge difference in life feel that educatee Veterans take versus students who didn't serve."

"At the Providence VAMC, I was struck by the number of student Veterans with significant PTSD symptoms in my caseload who were trying to enroll and attend school," he says. "I was also alarmed by the number who would drop out or practice very poorly. This led me to check with a number of schools in the surface area to learn more about any coordinated approaches to enhancing the odds that student Veterans could succeed. I discovered tremendous variability in the services that were offered from campus to campus and the near lack of systematic enquiry on the topic."

He adds: "Given my previous enquiry examining cursory interventions for alcohol use with college students and my current position every bit a staff psychologist in VA, this seemed like a practiced opportunity to review the literature and highlight some pressing issues and needs for the student Veterans who were returning to campus."

Non-Veteran students 'lack noesis of history'

Borsari and his team reviewed 130 manufactures with details on Veterans in college education. About half of the articles were peer-reviewed manuscripts. The other one-half appeared in government, trade association, and commercial publications.

Among the difficulties Vets could face up on campus, co-ordinate to Borsari and his team, is "intrusive or unpleasant" interactions with their non-Veteran peers, who may enquire whether the Veteran killed someone while deployed.

"Veterans often report difficulty connecting socially with traditional students, who are less likely to accept firmly established vocational, social, and family roles," the researchers write. "Across the perception that traditional students are merely 'kids,' the war machine has been a way of life for [Veterans], and the less-structured role as a student may not exist every bit familiar."

Smith, for one, sometimes finds it hard to converse with others on campus and in grade. At 33, he'due south at least a decade older than most of the students at UC-Berkeley and has a view of the United States, the war machine, and global affairs that is not shared past many of his fellow students. That disconnect frustrates him.

Case in signal: After more than 300 people were killed in a contempo terrorist attack in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, Smith heard a pupil say the U.South. is responsible for doing something about the attack. Smith responded that in 1993 the U.S. engaged in a battle in Mogadishu that left xviii Americans expressionless and became known every bit "Blackness Hawk Down." He believes many students who haven't served lack cognition of history and a sense of when it is correct to carry out a armed services intervention.

"I didn't experience what the American soldiers did in Somalia, merely I accept been shot at and blown up," he says. "I've seen what it costs to attempt to go over in that location and do these interventions. Your average American doesn't know that. They know these interventions happened. But there'south no way they could know exactly what information technology'southward really similar. Unless you lot really know the cost, you can't understand it in the moment."

Another postal service-9-xi Veteran, Christopher Chocolate-brown, concurs with Smith. Brownish, a Marine who did tours in Republic of iraq and Transitional islamic state of afghanistan and like Smith was diagnosed with PTSD, earned degrees from Western Washington University and the University of Washington.

Brownish says there'south an ideological divide between Veterans and not-Veterans in college that could be dangerous to former service members with mental wellness atmospheric condition.

"The Usa—whether we want to believe it or not—nosotros are warriors to a caste, and we're nevertheless in the largest wars to appointment," he says. "The problem is that only i percent of the population is shouldering those wars.

"In the past, the Native Americans perceived their warriors as highly respected, esteemed members of the community," he adds. "But it's non that way today. That speaks to the tension that many Vets experience in higher. That'southward the underlying cause that leads them to not desire to participate in discussions in the classroom. I know a lot of Veterans who accept tried to have those discussions and were just disregarded and avoided. That leads to potential isolation, which tin can exacerbate the condition of a Vet with PTSD."

Vets can find logistical challenges 'overwhelming' in college

Many Veterans in college confront mental health weather condition, such every bit PTSD, anxiety disorders, and depression, according to Borsari'due south study. It notes, however, that findings among higher students are mixed every bit to whether those disorders occur at much higher rates in Veterans than non-Veterans. Suicide attempts and thoughts, substance corruption, and concrete disabilities are likewise concerns amidst student Vets. Plus, Veteran students may all the same accept active-duty status, leading to redeployments that crusade disruptions in education, including a loss of scholarships and class credits.

The researchers also say Veterans may find logistical challenges to be "overwhelming" in the switch from military machine to college.

"Considering a large number of [Veterans] enlist in the military equally emerging adults and spend a number of years in the strict and structured surround of the military, they may be less skilled at navigating available services outside the context of the armed services setting," Borsari and his squad write.

These issues could include not understanding how to utilise services such as the Veterans Benefits Administration, which provides financial and other help to Veterans and their dependents. They may also have trouble managing pedagogy-related finances and could be tardily on tuition payments.

Retention is another trouble. A survey cited in the written report found that 37 per centum of part-time and 16 percent of full-time Veterans dropped out within nine months of enrollment. By and large, memory rates are lower among student Veterans compared with not-Vets, but factors such equally the type of school and major can arrive a difficult comparing.

There's too the transition to open campus life after experiencing a more rigid war machine lifestyle.

"Specifically, the armed forces often uses a standardized, stepwise, and 'hands on' approach to teaching a skill, which is dissimilar from the more autonomous approach typically used on college campuses," the researchers write. "Furthermore, dissimilar departments and private professors often vary in their approaches to grading, teaching, and class requirements, whereas instruction and evaluation in the armed forces tend to exist more consequent across settings. Perhaps for these reasons, student Vets have reported that they view the campus environment equally more chaotic, confusing, and less-ordered than the armed forces environment. Adapting to this surround may result in struggles and drop-outs among pupil Veterans."

Every bit office of the study, Borsari and his colleagues recommend means to improve life for Veterans on campus:

  • Educate faculty, staff, and students on the experiences of Veterans.
  • Better access to health and wellness services, with an emphasis on eliminating every bit many "barriers to mental health handling" as possible.
  • Improve admission to Veteran academic support services to facilitate the adjustment of Vets to college and "foster connections with other students and faculty."
  • Implement classes outside the main curriculum that are designed to aid the Veteran population.

"Many of the qualitative interviews conducted with pupil Veterans revealed a desire for Veteran-only classes, Veteran online courses, lounges, orientations, and other programs," the researchers write. "For example, learning communities, composed of groups of students sharing thematically linked experiences inside and exterior the classroom, have been

proposed as a way to keep student Veterans together by incorporating a curriculum that has been adapted for their needs."

Breaking down the divide

To Keith Armstrong, a social worker at the San Francisco VA Medical Center, the recommendations by Borsari and his team are "right on." Armstrong runs an outreach program – the Pupil Veteran Health Program – that assists student Veterans at more than a dozen schools in the Bay area (encounter sidebar).

Armstrong has collaborated with Borsari on projects related to educatee Veterans. He expounded on the recommendation to educate non-Veterans on the experiences of those who served.

"The lack of dialogue and understanding betwixt those who served and those who haven't, that chasm is larger now than it'south always been," he says. "There'due south just a huge difference in life experience that student Veterans take versus students who didn't serve. So annihilation that can break that down is a skillful affair. Information technology's also helpful for faculty and staff to get trained because many professors tend to fall on the more liberal, anti-war kind of edge of things. It's of import for them to understand what it's like going to state of war on the ground and not just from an intellectual standpoint.

"Educating faculty and staff on students who served and getting students who didn't serve into more than dialogue, letting them ask impaired questions, that's all super helpful considering information technology helps to create a more inclusive environment," he adds.

Meanwhile, Matthew Smith is thriving academically and socially at UC-Berkeley. In improver to academics, he serves as president of the Cal Veterans Group, which provides professional, academic, and other resources to ease the transition of the school'south Veterans from military machine life to higher education.

Later on graduation, he wants to counsel aging Veterans on issues such as suicide prevention. VA data say 65 percent of all Veterans who died from suicide in 2014 were 50 years of age or older, and that nearly 50 percent of Veteran suicides that yr were at least threescore years old.

"I'm from Atlanta, where the politics are 180 degrees different from UC-Berkeley and the township of Berkeley," he says. "And and then I've go a better person. I've challenged some of my own personal beliefs by coming hither. I definitely have gotten fashion more patient with some of these kids when hearing some of the stuff that comes out of their mouths. I've also learned a lot from these kids because they're smart. The professors are amazing."

Program assists Vets at community colleges

Keith Armstrong, a social worker at the San Francisco VA Medical Center, understands that many student Veterans with mental health issues, such as PTSD, begin their journey in higher instruction at community colleges. He believes such problems tin make it daunting to tackle the demands of a iv-year school.

Armstrong runs the Educatee Veteran Health Program (SVHP).  The endeavor assists pupil Vets at four community colleges in the San Francisco Bay expanse in VA health care enrollment, social work and mental health services.

He established SVHP in 2010 at the City College of San Francisco, which today has ii total-time VA clinicians on campus. The program as well assigns VA staff to the Higher of the Redwoods, Napa Valley Higher, and Skyline College.

SVHP also oversees the Bay Area Educatee Veteran Leadership Council, which involves at least fifteen colleges and universities in the region, including the four primary customs colleges. The council relies on pupil Veteran leaders from ii-year, iv-year and graduate schools who are studying business, law, and medicine. It aims to improve the student Veteran feel by providing a forum for the leaders to share communication, such as how best to run a student Veteran guild or how to work with a college administration.

According to Armstrong, SVHP served as a model for the creation of the VA program Veterans Integration to Academic Leadership (VITAL) in 2012. VITAL, in role, helps connect Vets to their local VA medical centers for physical and mental health assistance. The initiative now has programs at 23 VA medical centers in the U.South.  At least one employee from each VA facility is assigned to provide mental wellness and outreach services at schools in that respective expanse.

The Student Veteran Wellness Programme is role of VITAL.

"We provide mental health work and social services and evidence-based psychotherapy services at our four primary schools," he says. "But what we're really driven by is providing services that make the VA relevant to student Veterans and their day-to-twenty-four hours life. The thought is that our programme is really the face up of VA. We desire to brand sure that when a educatee Veteran comes in with a question or an issue, if we tin't respond it we can link them with somebody who can."

Armstrong says VA medical personnel with SVHP are authorized to prescribe drugs at the City College of San Francisco, which has most 1,000 educatee Veterans. He says that service isn't provided, for case, at Napa Valley College, which has 200 student Veterans. At the 4 community colleges, social workers and psychologists provide treatments such as prolonged exposure, a form of cognitive beliefs therapy designed to treat PTSD, he says.

"Nosotros provide services including helping to get folks enrolled," he says. "Nosotros also get them appointments at a VA medical center when they first walk in to make sure that they're really hooked in to VA care. And we practice a speaker series, in which we run monthly presentations in the pupil Veteran lounge on topics of interest to student Veterans, ranging from learning about VA benefits to suicide prevention."

Armstrong is also a professor at the Academy of California, San Francisco. He co-authored the book "Backbone After Fire for Parents of Service Members: Strategies for Coping When Your Son or Girl Returns from Deployment."

He hopes the Student Veteran Health Plan pays off down the road when Vets enter the workforce.

"While we're providing services to student Veterans, we want to make sure that in that location'due south an opportunity for them to give dorsum to the community that they're embedded in," he says. "Information technology'south important to be communicating to the general public that our Veterans are non all cleaved people that we need to pity. In fact, they're going to exist the people who are going to be leading our state."

—Mike Richman

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