Group Therapy and the Vietnam Veteran

Paper Summary:

This paper explores the group therapy experience when dealing with Vietnam veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). It focuses on reinterpreting the traumatic event, sharing the overwhelming sense of remorse and feelings of guilt, anger, and helplessness, as well as assisting in coping and moving on with one's life. In this paper the writer explores the following questions surrounding group therapy with this population: What are the advantages of group therapy? What are some of the different models that have been employed? What are the common themes of the group therapy experience? What are the phases and curative factors of group therapy for PTSD? and What role does the therapist play in the therapeutic process?

From the Paper:

"As illustrated in the above passage from Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part I, the phenomenon of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder has been seen and documented for as long as wars have been waged, the trauma sustained by those involved in the conflict. Lady Percy so deftly describes the symptoms she had been observing in her husband since his return from combat: emotional numbing, isolation, anxiety, depression, hyper-vigilance, nightmares, and intrusive memories of the traumatic event. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), can be viewed as a reasonable response to being placed in an impossible situation, a way of coping with overwhelming stress and chaos, like that which is found in a combat situation. The modern diagnosis for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder involves four major components: 1) Exposure to a traumatic event that is outside the realm of normal human experience (e.g. combat) 2) Intrusive re-experiencing of the traumatic event in such ways as flashbacks, nightmares, etc. 3) numbing of emotional responses 4) an increased level of arousal, startle response, or hyper-vigilance.
In 1980 it was estimated that 500,000 to 700,000 Vietnam Veterans were in need of some type of psychological intervention (Wilson, 1980), and researcher's believed that of all those who served in Vietnam, 1.5 million would eventually be in need of some type of psychological intervention (Blank, 1980). Many different types of modalities have been employed in the cases of Vietnam veterans, from individual therapy to pharmacological interventions, but many researchers and clinicians believe that a group therapy intervention, when properly conducted, can be the most effective means of dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in Vietnam combat veterans (Engendorf, 1975; Horowitz and Solomon, 1975"

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