Main description:

This book tells the professional and personal experiences of American military psychiatrists and their colleagues in the longest conflict in American history. These highly trained men and women treat service members for the psychological consequences from their experiences in battle, including killing enemy combatants; seeing wounded and killed civilian casualties; losing their friends in combat; factoring in personal mental health needs, including psychiatric drug treatment; and potentially dealing with their own physical injuries from being shot or blown up.
The volume consists of 20 short first-person case studies from the mental health providers who have been risking their lives while treating patients in the battlefield since 9/11. Written by expert psychiatrists who have experienced these challenges directly, this texts offers both a clinical and personal account that is not found anywhere else. Topics include tips on providing psychotherapy in battle, evaluating and treating detainees in war prisons such as Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, and the unique challenges of prescribing medication to patients who are also comrades in war.
Psychiatrists in Combat is uniquely positioned to be a valuable resource for psychiatrists interested in trauma and veterans, psychologists, social workers, occupational therapists, military health personnel, and mental health professionals interested in military psychiatry.

Contents:

Foreword

Preface

Contributors

2 1. The Road to Iraq

Kris Peterson

2. Farm Boy Turned Military Psychologist: A Summary of War Deployment Experiences, Struggles, and Coping

Layne D. Bennion

3. Someone Always Has It Worse: The Convoy to Balad

Robert D. Forsten

4. Psychiatrists in Combat: From the Deckplates to Division

Kevin D. Moore

5. Occupational Therapists Share Deployment Experiences from Iraq and Afghanistan

William Heath Sharp, Matthew St. Laurent, Michelle J. Nordstrom, Brian T. Gregg, and Kristin Yu

6. The Most Efficient Marine

Heidi S. Kraft

7. The Purposeful Doctor

Mary El Pearce

8. The Iraqi Heart of Darkness: A Visit to Abu Ghraib

Elspeth Cameron Ritchie

9. The Two Sides of Modern Day American Combat: From Camp Austerity to Camp Chocolate Cake

Jeffrey Millegan

10. Zero To Sixty: From Residency to the War Zone

Christopher H. Warner

11. Research at the Tip of the Spear

Carl Andrew Castro

12. From Battalion Surgeon to Combat Psychiatrist: Three Tours in Iraq and Afghanistan

Kenneth Richter, Jr.

13. "Oh, The Things You Can Find"

Robert Koffman

14. Chronicles from the Cradle of Civilization

Kaustubh G. Joshi

15. To Squander the Fighting Strength? Personal Experiences with Preventive Psychiatry and the Dilemma of Wartime Public Mental Health

Remington Lee Nevin

16. Learning to Scale the Wall

Vincent F. Capaldi II

17. Shrink in the Making: Learning to Become a Psychiatrist From the War Wounded

Rohul Amin

18. After the Smoke Clears

Shannon Merkle

19. The French Fourragere: Gore and Lore

David Michael Hanrahan

20. Leaving Our Mark

Peter Saulinus Armanas

21. Last of the OSCAR Psychologists in Afghanistan: An Expeditionary Model of Care Jesse Locke

Index