Joan Tibaldi LCSW, BCD
NYS Licensed Clinical Social Worker
Volunteer, The Soldiers Project

The Soldiers Project is a private, non-profit group of volunteer licensed psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, mental health nurses, and marriage and family therapists that was established to provide free confidential mental health counseling to military personnel who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan and their loved ones  (including girlfriends, boyfriends, spouses, children, parents and grandparents). The Soldiers Project is outside the military; it operates on a private practice model, with free counseling of­fered, in private offices, with no red tape, a flexible schedule, and no limit to the num­ber of sessions.

For more information, please visit www.thesoldiersproject.org or call Susan R. Cohen PH.D, RN, CS, co-chair, Long Island Division of The Soldiers Project.  Call .

There are over 7,000 American ser­vicemen and women with military serv­ice in either Iraq (Operation Iraqi Freedom) or Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom) on Long Island alone. Of those who have returned home from overseas, the prevalence rates for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Military Sexual Trauma (MST) and related psychiatric problems may be as high as 30 percent.  The implications for mental health clinicians are profound.  Repeated and extended de­ployments, are extremely stressful for the men and women involved and on their families. Literally thousands of trauma­tized individuals, many of them in their 20s, will be presenting with, a wide range of serious behavioral and emotion­al problems.     

Veterans, wives, husbands, children, parents, and other loved ones are all affected by the separation that is part of serving in the military.  Returning home from being in combat presents real, challenges.  The ethos of the military is to survive and endure, not to seek help, which makes help for returning soldiers all the more criti­cal.  Families are adjusting to a shifting dynamic, and need marital, educational and occupational guidance as well. It is often teachers, physicians, nurses and oth­er social service providers who are the first to see these families, in distress. The Soldiers Project offers seminars to these providers and to community groups, to heighten awareness that the disturbances that they are seeing may be related to having a family member in .the service or one who has recently returned home.