Welcome
“Sometimes our light goes out, but is blown again into instant flame by
an encounter with another human being.” ~ Albert Schweitzer
I have been working intensively for many months with people — some of them servicemembers and some of them veterans — who, having had their lives damaged -- some forever -- because they were given labels from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a product whose latest edition has brought $100 million in profit for its publisher, the American Psychiatric Association, but that is not scientifically grounded, helps little, and leads to a devastating array of kinds of harm. Today (April 27) and tomorrow, in what appears not to have been done before, a number of them are filing ethics complaints with the APA.
Part of the story is in this article, which just went up on the Washington Post online and will appear in print on Sunday.
When Johnny and Jane Come Marching Video - Part 1: The Problem
When Johnny and Jane Come Marching Video - Part 2: Some Solutions
Announcements
- Please sign petition: Stop veterans' deaths from psych drugs
- When Johnny and Jane Come Marching Home has won the 2011 American Publishers Award for Professional and Scholarly Excellence (PROSE Award) in the Psychology category. Click here to read more!
- National Day of Listening to Veterans is now a proposed House of Representatives Resolution! Please click here to learn more and to help keep the momentum going.
- Many veterans have told me, "I'm sick of being called sick!" Emotional suffering because of war is not, in and of itself, a mental illness. All who care about people harmed by psychiatric diagnosis, please sign petition, post, forward, tweet this petition.
- Since so many veterans are saying they are sick of being called mentally ill when in fact they are having understandable, human reactions to war, you might be interested to read the latest scandal in the world of psychiatric diagnosis @ http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/science-isnt-golden/201201/top-psychiatrists-again-try-quash-debate
- Here is the announcement that When Johnny and Jane Come Marching Home: How All of Us Can Help Veterans was chosen Independent Publisher's Groundbreaking Book of the Month!
- For a comprehensive consumer guide about housing and mortgages for veterans and active military, covers what VA loans are, how to apply for one, special protections against foreclosure, etc., please visit here.
- When Johnny and Jane Come Marching Home: How All of Us Can Help Veterans, published by MIT Press, is now in bookstores and can also be ordered online!
- Please consider "liking" the Facebook page for this book, which can be found here.
- When Johnny and Jane Come Marching Home has won the 2011 American Publishers Award for Professional and Scholarly Excellence (PROSE Award) in the Psychology category. Click here to read more!
- National Day of Listening to Veterans is now a proposed House of Representatives Resolution! Please click here to learn more and to help keep the momentum going.
- Many veterans have told me, "I'm sick of being called sick!" Emotional suffering because of war is not, in and of itself, a mental illness. All who care about people harmed by psychiatric diagnosis, please sign petition, post, forward, tweet this petition.
- Since so many veterans are saying they are sick of being called mentally ill when in fact they are having understandable, human reactions to war, you might be interested to read the latest scandal in the world of psychiatric diagnosis @ http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/science-isnt-golden/201201/top-psychiatrists-again-try-quash-debate
- Here is the announcement that When Johnny and Jane Come Marching Home: How All of Us Can Help Veterans was chosen Independent Publisher's Groundbreaking Book of the Month!
- For a comprehensive consumer guide about housing and mortgages for veterans and active military, covers what VA loans are, how to apply for one, special protections against foreclosure, etc., please visit here.
- When Johnny and Jane Come Marching Home: How All of Us Can Help Veterans, published by MIT Press, is now in bookstores and can also be ordered online!
- Please consider "liking" the Facebook page for this book, which can be found here.
About the Book
Traumatized veterans returning from our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are often diagnosed as suffering from a psychological disorder and prescribed a regimen of psychotherapy and psychiatric drugs. But why, asks psychologist Paula J. Caplan in this impassioned book, is it a mental illness to be devastated by war? What is a mentally healthy response to death, destruction, and moral horror? In When Johnny and Jane Come Marching Home, Caplan argues that the standard treatment of therapy and drugs is often actually harmful. It adds to veterans' burdens by making them believe wrongly that they should have "gotten over it"; it isolates them behind the closed doors of the therapist's office; and it makes them rely on often harmful drugs. The numbers of traumatized veterans from past and present wars who continue to suffer demonstrate the ineffectiveness of this approach.
Sending anguished veterans off to talk to therapists, writes Caplan, conveys the message that the rest of us don't want to listen—or that we don't feel qualified to listen. As a result, the truth about war is kept under wraps. Most of us remain ignorant about what war is really like—and continue to allow our governments to go to war without much protest. Caplan proposes an alternative: that we welcome veterans back into our communities and listen to their stories, one-on-one. (She provides guidelines for conducting these conversations.) This would begin a long overdue national discussion about the realities of war, and it would start the healing process for our returning veterans. About the Author
Paula J. Caplan, a clinical and research psychologist, is an Associate at Harvard University’s DuBois Institute and a Fellow at the Women and Public Policy Program in Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She is the author of The Myth of Women’s Masochism, They Say You’re Crazy: How the World’s Most Powerful Psychiatrists Decide Who’s Normal, and ten other books. Her articles, essays, and op-eds have appeared in both scholarly and popular publications.
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What Reviewers Are Saying
"This is a work of profound and astonishing humanity. A distinguished champion of public health, Paula Caplan shows that emotional trauma is often the normal and healthy response of soldiers to the brutalities of warfare. So what we need is not a narrow redefinition of the soldier's experience as a medical 'syndrome' but rather an honest social healing process that treats the soldier with dignity and respect -- and as a harbinger of hope for all of society."
--Jamin Raskin, Professor of Law, American University, and Maryland State Senator "I am truly amazed by Caplan's grasp of not only the psyche of the combat veteran but of the human heart and soul as a whole. There is no prosthesis for the amputated spirit, but Caplan certainly comes close to discovering just that through her extraordinary insight. Brilliant!"
--Michelle Wilmot, Women's Outreach Coordinator for Vets4Vets “Finally we have an all-encompassing, meticulously-researched, brilliantly thought-out and marvelously-written book about the effects of war on humans—and how all of us can help our veterans heal. Dr. Caplan cuts through the smoke of the institutional lies to the true nature of the emotional injuries sustained by these poor souls and offers a detailed and sensible path to healing. This brave and astonishing book stands as the classic, and the standard, for understanding the atrocities of war.”
--Samuel Shem, author of The Spirit of the Place and The House of God “Paula Caplan’s book is powerfully informative and creates an image of the importance of listening to our war veterans and the stories they have to share. This book provides an opportunity for their message to support life-enhancing and healing experiences.”
--David Collier, licensed psychologist/team leader, Salem (OR) Vet Center See additional endorsements. |
