Targeted Search

In this video, Joseph Giacino, PhD, explains why many people with disorders of consciousness struggle to access specialized inpatient rehabilitation—despite having significant potential for recovery.

Art Therapist Stephanie Clark shares what makes art therapy different than traditional talk therapies.

A Marine Veteran herself, she was resistant to try mindfulness, meditation, and yoga; these practices seemed ridiculous to her. But with time and patience, she began to feel great benefits of them. 

Businesses, restaurants, and other establishments including, ironically, the VA, should become more educated about service dogs and the Americans with Disabilities Act. 

Many non-profits have helped Brian Vines, a military veteran with PTSD and fulltime caregiver for his veteran wife with TBI and PTSD, over the last decade.

Since it's inception, yoga has been an integral part of the Emory Healthcare Veterans Program. During the intensive two-week program, veterans take one hour of yoga three times a week where they learn to release physical and emotional pain. Mr. Yura says that although some students are more engaged than others, it is rewarding for him to see the extent of people's responses to the practice, including embracing what they have learned to use post-program like specific movements for lower back release, breathing techniques, and strategies for calming the nervous system during a reactive situation.

Creating individualized treatment plans for veterans is crucial as they may be experiencing symptoms from PTSD, TBI or other concussive injuries as well as moral injury. Often, soldiers enter a war in their late teens or early 20s when their brain has not yet reached full maturation. Providers must consider all of a veteran’s physical and psychological factors when tailoring treatment strategies.

For many veterans and service members returning from deployment, not having their "team," their battle buddies around is very difficult. Everything seems to be about the individual. Capitalizing on this team unity mentality, providers at the Road Home Program understand that more healing will happen when people are working on individualized therapies as well as group therapies and activities. Once again, they have each other's backs.

Treating service members and veterans with TBI and PTSD often includes complex and unique interventions and treatments. Based on their evidence-based guidelines and experiences working with thousands of people in their two-week immersive program, Home Base also focuses intentionally and systematically on assessing what the population needs once they leave the program and return to their communities. The more Home Base can help connect their participants with clusters of experts in their areas, the more long-term healing will occur.

Does success translate into riding a horse again, returning to your pre-military job as an accountant, or coaching your kid’s Little League team? Staff at the Home Base Program understand that what success looks like for one military member with TBI and/or PTSD may look 180-degrees different from that of another. Using evidence-based guidelines to drive their therapeutic regimens as well as applying lessons learned from helping thousands of people in the program, Home Base providers are not only fine-tuning what they do each day but also learning and creating the next generation of effective therapies.

Home Base’s two weeks of assessments and individualized therapies focused on treating veterans and services members with TBI and PTSD seems to be the “sweet spot” of time for this kind of immersive program. Staff in the program have seen lives changed, lives saved. They understand that the veteran experience is a unique one, hard for civilians to fully comprehend. Providing these men and women with the tailored interventions and therapies they need to enhance function in their day-to-day life is often as important as the bonding aspect of being with others who have had and continue to have similar experiences, challenges, and forward steps.