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Changes don’t happen 0-60 mph, rather they occur incrementally. Providers know that barriers can impede improvement to healing, but by setting a series of step-by-step goals—whether treatments for better sleep, pain relief, or relationship strategies— service members and veterans can see improvements to their physical, behavioral, and emotional issues and build on them from there.

Telling your loved one with PTSD that you cherish them, you care about them, and that you will help them if they will let you is a powerful first step toward getting that person needed treatment. You can’t take on someone else’s suffering—unproductive, anyway—but you can steer them toward the resources and providers who can help them.

What is most important about PTSD is getting the needed help. PTSD can spiral into depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues that can lead to one’s inability to work or maintain connections with friends and family. Treatment should be sovereign.

After intensive treatment programs like Home Base, often veterans and service members need to rely on their local providers who have not been specifically trained to work with people who have military-related TBI and/or PTSD. But there are lots of resources out there, like Home Base, that can help civilian providers learn more to successfully understand and help this large, unique population in their cities and towns.

Dr. Mary Alexis Iaccarino tells the story of a service member who sent her team a note of thanks along with a photo of himself attending his daughter’s graduation. Before attending the Home Base program as well as a special brain health and trauma program for Special Operations Forces, he could never have imagined being in a crowd filled with noises and lights. For him, attending the graduation was a huge win; because of treatment he was able to participate in a big family moment.

Oftentimes, a family member is the first to recognize symptoms of TBI and/or PTSD in their loved one who has returned from military service. At the Home Base program, veterans and service members are accompanied by a family member for part of the two-week intensive so upon returning home, the family knows better how to help their loved one understand their symptoms and aid with and ongoing treatments, interventions, medications, and general support.

In our country—and around the world—we are witnessing a rise in suicide, drug dependency, and poor access to physical and mental health services. Programs like Wounded Warrior Project feel it is their responsibility to translate their best practices offered to veterans and service members for treatment and rehabilitation for these conditions to the entire country and world of civilians.

Because Wounded Warrior Project works with many vets who have TBI and/or PTSD, staff hear many misconceptions. One misconception is that there are no treatments for TBI and PTSD. Not true. There are gold-standard treatments to heal people with PTSD and there are very effective rehab programs for people with TBI. Also, people need to remember that both of these conditions are often invisible wounds and can affect anyone—male, female, young, old, and so on.

To help more veterans who are experiencing PTSD get the treatment they need to heal and move forward in their lives, many mental health providers have joined PSYPACT, which allows them to provide telehealth care outside the state(s) in which they have licensure. So far, 22 out of 50 states are part of the organization. Learn more here.

Treating PTSD in post-9/11 and other veterans is best undertaken with experts in prolonged exposure and cognitive processing therapy. Experts in these therapies can be found in person or via telehealth through the Warrior Care Networks. WCN providers also share their treatment models with primary care doctors and buddy system programs to expand their reach.

Two of the most researched and effective treatments for PTSD are prolonged exposure and cognitive processing therapy. The first involves approaching instead of avoiding traumatic memories, the second working on changing thought patterns to reduce the impact of the trauma. With the help of an experienced provider, people can be successfully treated for PTSD.

Emory Healthcare Veterans Program’s two-week PTDS Treatment intensive for post-9.11 vets is a convenient and effective means for people to get needed treatment for PTSD, TBI, depression, chronic pain, and substance abuse from home. The results are the same whether accessing care via telehealth or on site.