Wounded Warrior Combat Stress Recovery Program

Asking for help is strength not weakness.

Wounded Warrior Project has a Combat Stress Recovery Program (CSRP) that addresses the mental health needs of warriors returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. CRSP provides services at key stages during a warrior's readjustment process. While post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and combat and operational stress have been around for generations of warriors, Wounded Warrior Project strives to fully understand combat stress from the perspective of an OEF/OIF warrior. Key issues include the stigma attached to mental health, access to care, and interpersonal relationship challenges.

Our approach to mental health is two-fold:
1.  We help warriors navigate mental health resources that help process their combat experience. WWP Restore is an online tool that can help warriors, their families, and their caregivers learn more about the invisible mental health wounds of war.
2.  We challenge warriors to think about goal setting and understanding their "new normal." How can warriors be more physically fit? What will it take for them to be economically empowered?

WWP Restore is an online, multi-media tool that offers warriors and caregivers the chance to learn about readjustment challenges. Warriors can take self-assessments and partcipate in interactive skill-building exercises that provide practical ways to deal with combat stress. Restore offers a chance to listen to fellow warriors describe some of their greatest challenges and the ways they've coped with these obstacles in unscripted video clips. WWP understands that sometimes it takes someone who's "been there, done that" to truly understand what you're going through.

Here's how it works:  Go to www.woundedwarriorproject.org

1.   If you are not already a WWP Alumni, create a free account that gives you access to all WWP programs and services.

2.  Next, visit WWP Connect and look for the Restore link on the right end of the red menu bar near the top of the page.

3.  Follow the link for Restore. You are now inside an annoymous enviroment where you can access a variety of valuable materials, learning modules, and insightful warrior stories.

Deployments to war-zones change service members and their families. Some of the changes are positive. For example, personal and professional growth due to the ability to face intense challenges and adversities competently. Combat and operational experiences can also be traumatic and produce lasting emotional wounds. Examples of traumatic deployment experiences are threat to life, the loss of others, and seeing the wounded and the dying.

Exposure to traumatic combat and operational experiences affects service members and veterans spiritually, psychologically, biologically, and socially. A veteran with a good job, good social supports, and a healthy leisure routine may have an easier readjustment to civilian life. If your scars are getting in the way of your relationships, work, or other important activities, or if things are getting worse rather than better, it is important that you take steps to get the help you need.