Veteran mental health: Breaking stigma with #SameHere

Veterans Day is this Wednesday and many veterans and service members struggle with their mental health in silence. So a mental health advocate, Eric Hewson, works with military chaplains to change that and help those who serve find a space to be heard. Let's go ahead and bring him in. Eric, joining us live now to talk more about what he's doing. Eric, thanks for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. Such an important topic. Absolutely. So first, talk about the stigma of mental health and how it impacts service members and veterans. So I think the fascinating thing about how stigma is handled in our society is that we're looking at mental health through the lens of binaries, the belief that some people have it and some people don't. You either fit into a category of one of the DSM-5 labels of anxiety, depression, PTSD, or you don't. And when we look at it through that lens, the issue becomes we're pointing at people and saying they're the ones with the issues, when the reality is we all have a nervous system, we all have a brain contained within that nervous system, and that nervous system is moving up and down on a continuum. So it's one of the first pieces of breaking that stigma is actually not talking about the concept of stigma, talking about the concept that all of us are going through something, Not one in five with men. mental illness, but five in five. And those same issues, unfortunately, get perpetuated with the reason why I work with chaplains on military bases is because they're the ones who are able to work directly with our service folks and be open and not be mandatory reporters, which is something I could dive into a little more detail, different route for them to go different than going to the counseling center. And Eric, what are some of the barriers to care for veterans and And our service members. So think about it. You have folks who are coming out of high school, just like anyone who's going at the college, as an example, and they're placed first in boot camps, and then they go to their tech schools, and then they're deployed on bases all throughout our country and all throughout our world, for that matter. And so they're on these bases, and they're supposed to be on the ready, expected that they're going to be using machinery or weaponry or be involved in special missions. And the thing is, if they raise their hand and say, I'm dealing with something, ironically, just seeing a weapon right there, the weapon gets taken away from you. So the incentive, unfortunately, right? And obviously, the more we keep things quiet, the more it builds over time. And so back to the chaplaincy group, they're non-mandatory reporters. You can go and you can speak to someone from the faith-based community on base. And instead of going directly into the counseling center where they would have to... Put that information up through the chain of command to your supervisor. When you go in with the chaplains, you get to open up and share and talk about past, talk about what you've been through. It's non-diagnostic, so there's no labels being shared. And now that's something that you can work on with them to find a path towards wellness. Thanks so much for sharing. And that chaplain group is called Hashtag Same Here, correct? So Hashtag Same Here is the name of our overall movement, like you and I were the same, but with the chaplain specifically, we partnered with them using that terminology that everyone is going through something. The concept of the same here is it's all of us. Okay, Eric, thanks for clarifying. Let's get into the mission behind Hashtag Same Here. I understand that you all work with the chaplain group. Talk about you all's mission and some of the coping skills and strategies you all bring to veterans and our active duty service members. So as you're seeing the slideshow going up right there, you're seeing something with emoji faces on and then underneath the emoji faces, you're seeing columns and those columns stand for common thoughts, common feelings, common behaviors. I've used the term before non-diagnostic. So when we're working with the service folks, it's getting them to understand where their nervous system is shifting. They're constantly on something called on the ready, right? Unfortunately, we're involved in an active war right now, which means there's expectations for them in terms of their duty and Well, that. That revs the nervous system up, and oftentimes when we're so heightened in that state, the adrenaline's pumping, we're ready to go, we're ignoring things that have built from the past. So when I referenced before that these are kids coming out of high school, going right into service, guess what? They're dealing with divorce and job loss and breakup and verbal abuse and sexual abuse and bullying and sickness of loved ones and loss of loved ones, just like the average human being is. But they're covering that up because of their service, just like an athlete might be covering up. I heard you talking about sports before that oftentimes. their focus on what's in front of them gets dampened and they don't work on those things. So we work with them to provide these non-diagnostic tools to give them check-in opportunities to communicate with one another so it doesn't put them in the category where they get taken out of their duty, but it does allow them to raise their hand and say, something's going on and I feel like I need to work on it. And Eric, one last question for you before you go. What are some of the goals of Hashtag Same Here and challenging the misconceptions of mental health as a whole. Yeah, I think, you know, our mission as an organization is to normalize this conversation, make it part of our everyday conversations. And I think the only way that we do that is taking it away from a clinical psychological lens where we have to look at it in terms of I'm sick. Now I need to go get help from a professional. And instead, like we're doing on military bases, create peer support networks. One of the biggest barriers for chaplains, people believing that there's something wrong with them that's uniquely different than other people. When the reality is, Like I said, we all have a brain. We all have a nervous system. We're all going through challenging events. If we accept that idea, just like with physical health, we'll wrap our arms around each other and help one another. Dr. Eric, thanks so much for joining us to talk about this, a very important conversation, and enjoy hearing that you all are doing this work, especially for our military community. So thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you, thank you for having me.