Click here to listen to the audio.

By Dennis Miller, BHC Senior Writer

During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, embedded journalists offered readers and viewers an inside look at the military’s day-to-day operations. Kelly Kennedy, a reporter with Gannett’s Army Times, was one of them. She spent weeks with the Charlie Company 126th Infantry Regiment, bearing personal witness to the unit’s tragedies, successes and daily grind – and narrowly missed becoming a casualty of war herself. The unit, based in one of the most volatile and dangerous regions of Iraq, was particularly hard hit with losses, and Kennedy grew close enough to many of its members to witness firsthand the effects of these losses on its survivors. Indeed, she herself experienced some symptoms of post-traumatic stress after her return home.

Following her time as an embedded journalist in Iraq, Kennedy became interested in examining the longterm effects of post-traumatic stress disorder on military members and their families. She decided that the best way to cover the story was to embed herself once again – except this time, into the families of four returning soldiers, rather than into a military unit. Her work, funded in part by a Rosalynn Carter Center Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism targeted at reporting on post-traumatic stress disorder in the military, has resulted in an incisive series of reports for the Army Times, the first of which was recently also republished in USA Today. 

Kennedy credits the Carter Center Fellowship she received with preparing her for reporting on mental health issues and opening doors. “I’ve learned so much through them. It’s just been an amazing place for getting resources and meeting other reporters who are dealing with the same sorts of stories and issues of their own. It’s been a great experience.” She is also now working on a book about her experiences both during and after the war, entitled They Fought For Each Other, which is due out in March.

Behavioral Health Central recently interviewed Kennedy about her experiences and work, the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder on military members and their families, the role stigma often plays in keeping servicemembers from seeking help, and how the Carter Center Fellowship has facilitated her reporting. To listen to this powerful and moving talk, click the audio icon above. The following is a written transcript:

BHC: This is Dennis Miller of Behavioral Health Central. With me today is Kelly Kennedy, a reporter with Army Times. Kelly was a recipient of a 2008/2009 Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism to produce a series of articles on the stigma associated with post traumatic stress disorder, and what can be done to treat and prevent the illness in returning troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Kelly, thank you so much for joining us today.

Kelly Kennedy: Thanks for having me.

BHC: Tell us, first, a little bit about the Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism that you received. How it came about, what the award entailed, and how it assisted you in doing your reporting.

KK: Sure. I was working on actually here on a fellowship with the Dart Foundation, an Ochberg Fellow, for people who cover trauma journalism, and while I was working on that fellowship someone told me about the Rosalynn Carter Foundation or Fellowship. I’d been working on a series of stories about a unit I embedded with in Iraq that had been hit particularly hard and from there we decided to do a series of stories about post traumatic stress disorder, based on experiences we had personally in watching the soldiers that had been hit so hard over there.

And with the Rosalynn Carter Fellowship, they actually bring you in for a week and teach you all about mental health issues —how to report it properly, and just what the different mental health issues are. And then they provide you with a grant to work on your projects.

BHC: And how many articles did you end up publishing on the issue under the Fellowship?

KK: Well, we just launched a month ago. So we’ve done one main story that’s run. It was a 90-inch story kind of detailing the life of Sgt. Lloyd Sawyer who was an embalmer over in Iraq. And then the second story runs on Monday, and then throughout the next year we’ll continue to detail his experiences, but also to write about research associated with PTSD, the stigma issues associated with PTSD, as well as all the other things that come up, such as substance abuse or relationship problems, just to try to educate the soldiers and the service members as what to expect when they get home.

BHC: So this will be an ongoing kind of a series that will last, what, over the course of a year?

KK: Right, it will all be posted at militarytimes.com/ptsd.

BHC: Are the articles being syndicated to any other newspapers or publishers?

KK: Well, we’re owned by Gannet, so USA Today, ran the first story. I don’t know if they’ll continue to run the stories or not.

BHC: Well, tell us a little bit about how you go about fact gathering and reporting on this topic. Obviously you mentioned you were embedded with troops for a while. When it comes specifically to covering the mental health issues, how do you actually report that?

KK: It’s been really interesting. The past year, a photographer, Rob Curtis and I have been hanging out with four different service members that are veterans who are dealing with post traumatic stress disorder. So in the case of Lloyd Sawyer, we were down there several times a month just hanging out with his family. We’ve been there at six o’clock in the morning to see what happens when they get up, and at night to see how late Lloyd’s messing around on his computer because he can’t sleep. It’s been some kind of a heavy duty learning experiences that way. I don’t think I really understood what PTSD looked like until watching it that way.

And then just the basic questions talking to therapists and experts on mental health issues and trying to get some background on the military and how they are handling post-traumatic stress disorder by looking at records and talking to their experts and that sort of thing. It’s been reporting all across the board on this one.

BHC: Have you traveled at all to Iraq and Afghanistan in the course of reporting on PTSD?

KK: Not for this series. When I originally went to Iraq in 2007, it was as a medical reporter. And so, by that point, we’d already begun reporting on mental health issues because it was already becoming an issue with the troops. And while I was over there, the unit I was embedded with — it was Charlie Company 126 Infantry Regiment — we got on a few patrols with them, and decided to stay back at the last minute one day to actually talk to the medics about post-traumatic stress disorder. And while the guys were out, one of the Bradley’s rolled over a deep buried IED roadside bomb and it flipped their Bradley over and killed everybody inside. It was five guys and their Iraqi interpreter.

And both the photographer I was with and myself, we both had some personal reactions to that, and we watched the guys experience losing their friends. And that definitely was the starting point for this, just wanting to explain what they are going to go through (some of them; I mean not everybody goes through the same thing) as well as taking our own experiences and trying to explain it a little better.

BHC: One of the stated purposes of your Carter Fellowship was in particular to look into the stigma associated with PTSD and how that might be a barrier to treatment. Did you find indeed that it’s a significant barrier in the military and even after discharge?

KK: Absolutely. I think it starts with the guys themselves. They’re afraid that if they say that they need a break they’ll be seen as cowards, and the reason for that is if you stay back, somebody else has to go out in your place. So there’s a big block there and the other guys tend to build on that too. You’re trying to look out for each other — how can you look out for each other if you’re not there?

So some commanders are really good about saying, “Hey, you have no choice. We’re taking you out for a couple of days or a month or whatever it needs to be.” And some commanders sort of expect you to suck it up and they don’t necessarily believe that post-traumatic stress is an actual real issue. They think that people are making it up to try to get out of work or to try to get out of war.

And then, when they get home, it’s sort of the same thing where people just don’t know enough about it yet, I think. And I think some people go through some pretty traumatic experiences and they come home and they feel like they’re fine and so they don’t understand why another person might not be okay.

So it’s definitely an issue and when they get out, again, they don’t want to be embarrassed by it. They’re worried about their careers. I’ve heard from Veterans Affairs people in New York that the guys are afraid of being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, because if they are, they might not be able to get a job within a police department. And they have the same fears in the military — if you’re a leader and you say that you have a mental health issue, people won’t trust you. It’s definitely an issue with the guys being afraid they’re going to ruin their careers.

BHC: Did you see any evidence that those are somewhat legitimate fears?

KK: The people in New York that I talked to said it absolutely is a legitimate fear, but at the same time, if you’re dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder a lot of times that brings on anger issues, and sometimes some anxiety or distraction, and you need to get that taken care of before you become a police officer or before you lead men or women into another wartime situation.

So I think the military is doing some things to address that, such as taking it off of the security clearance exam. At the same time, if you do go to mental health, your commander knows about it. There’s no real privacy there. So they’re trying to do some things so you can go to a civilian doctor and no one would know about it. There’s definitely more work that needs to be done there.

BHC: How do you feel the military is doing overall at addressing the stigma factor?

KK: I think they’re probably saying the right things at the top, but trying to get it to trickle down is difficult. One of the things that sort of surprises me is that, I just heard from some guys in that unit that I was with in Iraq, and they’re saying, “How is this an issue? None of my guys are sick.” Well, then I hear from five or six of the guys who are being pushed out of the military, medically discharged for post-traumatic stress, but the word’s not getting back to the unit that this is actually an issue for people.

So I think there needs to be more of an education campaign about exactly how many people this is affecting and how many people are getting out because of it. And I also think that if everyone came back from Iraq or Afghanistan and absolutely had to go see a therapist, just as a police officer does after he goes through a traumatic situation, then that would help with stigma because the stigma would sort of disappear if everyone had to do it.

BHC: Yeah, on that point, interestingly I had the privilege and honor to talk to Matt Kuntz who’s with the Montana Chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI). His own brother committed suicide following his return from Iraq, which kind of spurred him to get active in this area. He ended up being recognized by President Obama for his work in helping to establish that very sort of protocol in the Montana National Guard where now all service members receive regular periodic mental health screenings, rather than having it be sort of a voluntary, self-reported thing. I understand now that that approach is being considered throughout the military. Do you think that’s the sort of approach that can help overcome the resistance to seek treatment that’s caused by stigma?

KK: Absolutely. But I think to do it, the military is going to need many, many, many more mental health therapists and clinicians. We don’t have enough people as it is. One of the biggest problems (I just read about this for Monday’s piece) is that guys will actually go to the mental health clinic and they can’t get an appointment for a month or two months. And when they do finally get an appointment, it’s for 15 minutes to talk about medications, not to talk about what they’re dealing with. So I think that’s a fantastic idea, but I think we need a lot more people available to perform those kinds of interviews if they’re going to make it work.

BHC: Talk a little bit about some of the radiating effects PTSD can have on families and even in the larger community after soldiers return.

KK: Yeah, one of the things that always surprises me when I listen to the troops is that someone will say, “I got back. I’m not having any symptoms at all, but I just can’t relate to my spouse anymore, and we’re going through a divorce. She doesn’t understand me.” And that’s kind of a huge symptom, actually, of post-traumatic stress, that idea that no one will ever understand and that you push people away. It definitely affects relationships. It’s causing child-abuse and spouse-abuse numbers in the military to go up because it causes such heavy anger issues.

And I certainly don’t want to present all veterans as having these anger issues, but it’s a piece of it, and it’s something that needs to be addressed. Within the communities, as people are leaving the military, it’s difficult to go to school if you’re having problems being in crowded rooms. It’s certainly difficult to keep your family life going if you’re just angry all the time. And then some of the guys are coming back and those anger issues are going even further, so that they’re having petty crime offenses or even more violence.

And then the other issue is that a lot of people who are dealing with post-traumatic stress self-medicate with alcohol or drugs, and so they’re having some problems with the law in those areas as well. It’s a huge issue, so [it’s] something our communities definitely need to be aware of and educated about.

BHC: On a personal level, I would imagine that your reporting on the war and on PTSD in particular must have exposed you yourself to many traumatic and, really, just the horrifying realities of war. How did the experience affect you personally?

KK: While I was in Iraq, it was kind of interesting, I kept saying to the guys, “You can’t go numb because if you go numb, you won’t deal with the problem now and it will be harder when you get home.” But after that Bradley incident, that’s exactly what I did. I went completely numb. I didn’t cry. I was there for 10 weeks after that had happened and I didn’t cry the whole time I was there. I didn’t feel anything at all. I mean, that day certainly was miserable, but in order to function the rest of the time I was there, I couldn’t really be emotional about it.

Then when I got home, I forced myself to sit down with my journal and cry about it because, I mean, I knew I was dealing with some real issues. But then, I was so distracted that it would take me three hours to read the newspaper in the morning or I was driving through stop signs — I just didn’t see them. And it took probably about a year for me get through. It was kind of a low-level sadness that was there, and I didn’t even realize this was there until someone said to me, “You know. you seem different.”

And then I was okay, but certainly, I wrote a book about the unit I was talking about. They actually ended up losing 14 men out of their company and one of them was Ross McGinnis, who was a 19-year-old kid who threw himself on a grenade to save four of his friends and received the Medal of Honor for that. And there are several case, stories of heroism, but after they had a second Bradley go over a deep, buried roadside bomb and flip over, and enryone again everybody was killed. And a first sergeant committed suicide in front of his men, just the stress got to be so much.

So as I was working on the book about that unit, yeah, that certainly got to me. Just telling those stories and listening to the first sergeant talk about what he saw when he went to that Bradley, just left me kind of sad and… yeah, a little stressed out.

BHC: You mentioned that you wrote a book. Is that book out in print now?

KK: It comes out in March. It’s called They Fought For Each Other and it’s through St. Martin’s Press.

BHC: Okay, so that’s one to look for.

KK: Yeah, and their stress sort of manifested as a mutiny at the end of their tour. They refused to go out, because they were afraid they would kill people. They were so angry that they would just kill anyone in their paths. It’s definitely a story about how combat stress can affect a person.

BHC: What was the resolution of that situation?

KK: They were — people argue about whether this was the best solution or not — but they were flagged, which meant they were not allowed to get awards or promotions for a couple of months. And then all of the sergeants in the platoon were moved into other units. They decided they basically needed a fresh start, and then they took that unit out of the neighborhood they had been in which was a really bad neighborhood in Baghdad.

BHC: Kelly, what’s been or what is the ongoing biggest challenge for you as a writer and a reporter seeking to present the reality of PTSD to readers truthfully and on a level they can relate to?

KK: Oh, there’s been a couple. I think that, first, embedding with a family helped me understand a lot of things that I didn’t understand before, like I didn’t understand that a flashback was something like — I thought that was more like a daydream, and the reality is that it’s someone feeling like they are back in Iraq, physically. Everything that they see around them is Iraq. It’s kind of a hallucination. I didn’t understand that before.

So I’ve been really careful to try to understand the nuances of the symptoms, as opposed to just saying, “Someone has a startled response.” Well, what does that mean? The cliché is that you sort of jump at loud noises, but it’s more than that. It’s smelling something and just feeling it in your gut.

So that’s been a challenge, but also trying to explain the story without coming across as saying that everyone responds in the same way or that everyone comes back angry and has these violent episodes. A lot of it’s internal. It’s more day to day, their own lives, as opposed to how it effects everyone else.

BHC: What do you hope that your readers take away from your writing and reporting on this topic?

KK: One of the things that came out of my own experience is that everyone kept saying, “Go to counseling. Go talk to someone.” And I kept thinking, “Well, how is that going to help? What’s talking to someone going to help? I tell this story every day. How’s talking to a counselor going to help?”

I’d like to explain a little bit more how the different treatments work, what they look like, and what they’ve done for people who have gone through — have the guys explain it themselves. Definitely, how to get help. Just trying to tell a story so people can read it and go, “Oh, wow, that’s how I feel too, and maybe I need to talk to someone.” So the idea is to really try to give people a place to work from, to understand what they’re going through and how they can get help.

BHC: What was the most important thing receiving the Carter Fellowship meant to you in terms of enabling you to better report on this?

KK: It’s helped a lot in many ways. One of the biggest is, I’ll tell a source, “I’m working on this as part of the Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Foundation,” and [they’ll say],“Oh, yeah, I’ll talk to you.” The program is pretty well known and people think it’s important.

My bosses have always been very supportive of these kinds of stories, but this kind of gave us a focus, this year-long package because of the Fellowship. So that was great. And certainly the money hasn’t hurt! We’ve traveled to Colorado and down to Richmond and to places we might not necessarily have been able to go for this story — especially when journalism is sort of hurting right now.

BHC: Excellent. Anything else you’d like to touch on that we haven’t talked about here so far?

KK: Yeah, one more thing I’d like to add about the Carter Foundation. I’ve learned so much through them. It’s just been an amazing place for getting resources and meeting other reporters who are dealing with the same sorts of stories and issues of their own. It’s been a great experience.

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed