LONGVIEW, Texas (AP) - Like too many veterans, Longview resident Joe “Doc” Roe has wondered whether he’d be better off dead.
The Longview News-Journal reports Roe served in the Navy and Marine Corps between 1986 and 2006, retiring when he got blown up by a roadside bomb in Iraq. But it was the psychological and emotional struggles he faced coming back to civilian life that were conspiring to kill him.
So when he learned about the Reboot Combat Recovery program, he signed up immediately.
“I’ve gone to rehabs, I’ve gone to PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) clinics, I’ve done everything on that side, but there was nothing treating our souls,” Roe said. “I stumbled upon a nurse at the VA that said you might be interested in this. So I came, I started going through it. It’s a 12-week course. Opened my eyes that everything I did in the military could be forgiven.”
Reboot Combat Recovery, led by volunteers Lisa Herterich and Nikki Hill, took place for the first time in Longview over three months at St. Mary’s Catholic Church. Roe and four others recently graduated from the program in a special ceremony in the Parish Hall.
The program focuses on helping combat veterans and their families with spiritual and moral injuries that stem from war and its associated traumas. It’s provided at no cost to participants, and each class includes a fellowship dinner and child care - something Herterich and Hill said was important so veterans in need wouldn’t have to worry about that potential barrier to seeking help.
Nationally, the Reboot program boasts a 78 percent graduation rate. No suicides have been reported among the group’s 2,000-plus graduates.
The program began in 2011 in Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Herterich, a nursing instructor at the University of Texas at Tyler Longview University Center and Army veteran, learned about the program and decided to bring it to Longview. She teamed with Hill, a retired Air Force veteran and nurse at Longview’s VA clinic, to start the program.
“You can see it on their face when they come to the VA clinic,” Hill said. “I have young men who come in and sit down, and I talk to them and start learning what they did, and we talk to them about PTSD; it’s just written all over their face, the pain that they’ve been through.”
Herterich said Reboot helps address things that stem from the roots of trauma, such as guilt and shame, depression, unresolved grief, suicide and unforgiveness. The program is faith-based but nondenominational.
“We believe, truly, that it is through God,” she said. “God created our souls, so God can heal our souls. … This is the missing piece that we’re not addressing with our combat veterans, that to really help them find peace and joy and freedom again from these symptoms that they’re having.”
Hill told Roe about the program after he came to the VA clinic. He’ll be returning for the program’s second run-through beginning in February - but as someone there to help other veterans find the light at the end of the tunnel.
“I’ve never thought about suicide, but I’ve thought about ’Would I be better off dead?’” Roe said. “This course showed me that you do have life, you do have something to do. God’s not done with you yet. It’s an eye-opener.”
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Information from: Longview News-Journal, http://www.news-journal.com
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