Vets center healing invisible wounds from different wars

East Valley Tribune
August 10, 2007
New Mesa Vets center healing invisible wounds
Mary K. Reinhart, Tribune

For Mike Saye and Daryl Cox, it was the Iraq War that unearthed the horrors of combat. The Vietnam veterans struggled for nearly 30 years with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, but never sought help until young Americans started fighting, and dying, in the Middle East.

They were gathered Thursday at a new Veterans Readjustment Center near Fiesta Mall in Mesa, getting help for their own demons and hoping to give younger veterans the benefit of their experience.

“It triggered everything in me. I started dreaming about it again,” Saye, of Mesa, said of the Iraq War.

“I was a candidate for PTSD for years and years, but I thought I could handle it,” he said, even as he struggled through four marriages and some 30 jobs.

“But I can’t, and they can’t either. I don’t want them to wait as long as I did to get help.”

Though a trickle of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are finding their way to the new center, team leader Patrick Ryan knows many more are out there.

“We’re certainly trying to do outreach, but we’d like to see more of them,” Ryan said. “The stigma is not what it used to be, but it’s still there.”

New PTSD blog

Wounded Times Blog There are so many reports coming out on Post Traumatic Stress from all over the world, so I decided to put up a blog just for them.

If you want to read the reports about the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, veterans and the way they are treated along with other military news, Nam Guardian Angel blog spot is still up and I will be posting there as well. This is strictly for PTSD. It will not be only from military causes, but I tend to focus more on that.

As I go along I will move some of the posts from the other blog. There are over seven thousand post to go through so that will take a lot of time.




Kathie Costos DiCesare