Mental Health Monitor: Promoting Prevention

May/June 2016 Issue

Mental Health Monitor: Promoting Prevention
By Sue Coyle, MSW
Social Work Today
Vol. 16 No. 3 P. 8

In social work, we react to problems by treating them. Treatment has, in many ways, become the focus of much social work. Clinicians and researchers often try to determine how best to address present and past issues. They look at what is and don't look often enough at what will be.

"In general, that's a challenge in the United States," says Jordan DeVylder, PhD, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland School of Social Work. "It is a part of our culture, of how we view health. We are very focused on the idea that you have an issue and then you treat it."

However, that idea leaves out a crucial aspect of social work: prevention. Preventive care can promote physical, mental, and behavioral health. It can save lives and money, but for that to happen, it must first be more prominent part of social workers' training.

"We have to train the workforce to be involved in prevention," says J. David Hawkins, PhD, an endowed professor of prevention at the University of Washington School of Social Work. "We train people to intervene where kids are already enmeshed in problems. That's important. But we also have to provide preventive interventions."

In an attempt to do that and to better highlight the evidence supporting preventive action, "ensuring the healthy development of all youth" has been identified as one of the American Academy of Social Work & Social Welfare's Grand Challenges for Social Work. The Coalition for the Promotion of Behavioral Health has deemed "unleashing the power of prevention" as having the greatest potential to achieve the grand challenge.

Grand Challenges 
What does that mean?

"The Grand Challenges for Social Work Initiative is intended to increase the impact of social work by strengthening the underlying science behind what we do and, in so doing, to make broad and deep measurable changes in society over the next decade. To do so, we will take advantage of the fundamental truth of social work that social relationships and social organizations are among the most influential forces in human experience," explains Richard Barth, PhD, MSW, dean of the University of Maryland School of Social Work and president of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare (AASWSW).

Sarah Butts, MSW, assistant to the president at AASWSW, further explains that the grand challenges model is based on those from other fields, such as engineering. For social work, "The 12 grand challenges and supporting papers emerged from input from the field," says Butts, who staffs the grand challenges initiative and coordinates the work nationally.

"To develop the grand challenges, the AASWSW solicited ideas, including two calls for concept papers and additional outreach to fill gaps. The most promising concepts were selected, papers were further developed, and a list of 12 grand challenges emerged," she says.

The goal of ensuring healthy development for all youth emerged. The key to that challenge? Prevention.

Prevention 
"What's really exciting in the area of youth development is the progress that's been made in our ability to actually prevent behavioral health problems," Hawkins says. "We've learned that there are common risk and protective factors that can predict [behavioral health problems]. And we've also learned that you can change those things and actually prevent behavioral health problems from developing."

Prevention can begin as early as gestation. "[Prevention services] can start during the second trimester of pregnancy," Hawkins says. "There are programs like Nurse-Family Partnership that start when [for example] a pregnant teenage girl who doesn't have a partner or other supports is visited at home by a nurse. Preventive interventions across development through adolescence have been tested and found effective. They work."

DeVylder is currently taking part in research that examines whether schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders can be prevented.

"There is a lot of work being done in hospitals and university-based specialty clinics," DeVylder says. "We work with a very small group of individuals who are adolescents or young adults and are experiencing hallucinations and delusions, though not to the same level of intensity [as an adult with a diagnosis of a psychotic disorder]. These youth are help seeking and, based on the criteria, they're identified as being at high risk for progression to a psychotic disorder.

"It does seem possible to actually prevent the initial onset [of the disorder], based on the evidence we have so far. Psychotherapy, maintaining family supports, maintaining social supports, staying in school, staying in work, maintaining housing, and harm reduction to substance use are a lot of the things that are working for this group," he says.

While the work DeVylder is a part of is still in the early stages of development, Hawkins notes that there are more than 60 evidence-based interventions on Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development, a site aimed at providing a registry of tested and effective programs to be used with families, in schools, and in communities, and these programs are ready to be implemented.

What's more, they work and they save lives and money—music to every social worker's ears. "One of our strong arguments is that preventive interventions not only work but they're [also] more cost-effective," says Jeff Jenson, PhD, the Philip D. and Eleanor G. Winn professor for children and youth at risk at the University of Denver. Together, Jenson and Hawkins were a part of the team that authored "Unleashing the Power of Prevention." Jenson and Hawkins note that mental and behavioral health problems cost the United States approximately $247 billion per year. "If we could reduce those problems by even 20%, as we believe is possible, think of the savings to society," Hawkins says.

"The majority of people in the United States don't realize that prevention is effective. They are not aware of the large number of tested and effective programs that exist for children and families," Jenson says. "We think it's important to shift the paradigm in a way that acknowledges the importance of prevention in our society. Along with that, we think it is key that we fund more programs that offer preventive interventions for young people and families."

Pushing for Prevention 
But why should social workers lead the way in prevention? Why should they shift the paradigm?

"Social workers are trained in fundamental ways to assess problems, assess clients, assess a variety of situations," Jenson says. "Social workers have a presence in so many different ways and are very well positioned to contribute more to prevention practice.

"If we think back to the roots of social work, in the early days," Jenson continues, "it was all about building relationships, understanding community needs—trying to prevent these problems."

In order to do that, social workers need to get involved in the push for prevention. "One way to get involved is to join our coalition," says Jenson, referencing The Coalition for the Promotion of Behavioral Health, which was created to further the prevention work of the grand challenge and comprises social workers and allied colleagues throughout the country. "Our coalition includes task forces that have been established to raise awareness about the effectiveness of prevention, assist states and communities who are interested in increasing preventive interventions, and train students to become skilled in prevention practice and policy," Jenson says.

Involvement in the coalition can and will lead to a sharing of ideas and practices surrounding prevention. "One of the things that I'm hoping is that faculty in schools of social work and other disciplines will offer courses on prevention," Hawkins says. "Kim Bender [an associate professor at the University of Denver] and Valerie Shapiro [an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley] are collecting curricula that people are using. If someone wanted to teach a course on prevention, he/she could get in touch with them. They can get you curricula to help you get started.

"If you're integrating something on prevention into a course now," he adds, "share that with us."

For those in the field, Hawkins encourages the use of Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development initiative at the University of Colorado Boulder. "Look at the programs that are on the Blueprints website," he says. "Ask, 'Which of those can I add to my bag of tricks?' If we're successful, it's going to be really important that people have the skills to be able to lead prevention work. Be prepared to do preventive interventions in your community and get the word out about these programs and their effectiveness.

"We have to create demand on the part of the public to say we want to prevent these problems," Hawkins continues. "We don't want to wait until kids get kicked out of schools. We need to have preventive interventions that are effective." We have to, as Hawkins and Jenson denote in the title of their paper, unleash the power of prevention.

For more information on the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare and the 12 Grand Challenges for Social Work, visit grandchallengesforsocialwork.org. For more information on evidence-based preventive models/programs, visit www.blueprintsprograms.com.

— Sue Coyle, MSW, is a freelance writer and social worker in the Philadelphia suburbs

Children of People With Serious Mental Illness

May/June 2016 Issue

Children of People With Serious Mental Illness
By Kate Jackson
Social Work Today
Vol. 16 No. 3 P. 24

Many of these children are resilient; others face problems that persist into adulthood, but resources are available for intervention and support.

According to the National Institute for Mental Health, 9.8 million Americans aged 18 or older, or 4.2% of the adult population, are living with a serious mental illness such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or major depressive disorder. Other mental illnesses that may affect parenting and child welfare include obsessive-compulsive, paranoid, psychotic, panic, and posttraumatic stress disorders.

Because two-thirds of females and one-half of men afflicted with serious mental illnesses are likely to be parents, "There's a significant number of individuals with some level of emotional distress who are raising children," says Joanne Nicholson, PhD, a professor of psychiatry at Dartmouth Psychiatric Research Center in The Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth University. These parents may bequeath to their children a legacy of physical, emotional, or social impairment or dysfunction that may manifest in feelings of guilt or low self-esteem, instability, and difficulties with employment, socialization, interpersonal relationships, and parenting their own children. Many children of parents with serious mental illnesses are resilient and will not experience these challenges. But for those who do, the problems may persist into adulthood and, without acknowledgement or attention, may have the power to negatively affect many aspects of their lives.

This lingering impact on some of the adult children of people with serious mental illnesses, experts say, has been widely overlooked. A significant portion of individuals with such illnesses and the problems experienced by their offspring often go unrecognized, in part because only a small percentage of the population with these illnesses receive services, and of those who do, a significant percentage are probably not questioned about their parenting status, Nicholson says. Thus, both the children and the parents tend to be underserved.

These issues may be compounded and exacerbated by other factors within the family. "It's important to understand the context of families where one or both parents has a mental illness," says Barbara J. Friesen, PhD, a research professor at the Regional Research Institute for Human Services at the School of Social Work at Portland State University. "These families are often characterized by poverty, may consist of single-parent households, and/or be challenged by conflict and disrupted parental relationships. These contextual factors may be related directly or indirectly to parents' symptoms and/or behavior."

All children are not equally affected. "Some are born more vulnerable than others and some have vulnerabilities that are conveyed by bad economic climate, poor housing climate, many social and environmental conditions, and unsafe neighborhoods," Nicholson says. "There are a lot of factors that contribute to how well people do in general, and having a parent with a mental illness is just another domain of vulnerability," she says.

Wide-Ranging Repercussions 
According to Friesen, the research literature identifies many challenges for the adult children of people with serious mental illnesses. "The older literature focused almost exclusively on problems and was not strengths-based. Older studies looked at rates of mental health and behavior problems and substance abuse, as well as issues such as 'parentification'—role reversal, where children become caregivers of their ill parents. Data sources were usually secondary, not gathered from the adult children themselves, but rather based on agency and clinical records or on studies using service providers as sources. These data, therefore, were biased in the sense that they did not include adult children who had not sought treatment. Major problems identified were higher rates of depression and other mental health problems, higher rates of substance abuse, social adjustment issues, and increased suicide risk in children whose parents committed suicide."

More recent studies, Friesen says, explore the issues directly with the now-adult offspring of people with mental illness. She points, for example, to researchers who synthesized seven qualitative studies using data garnered directly from adult children, identifying 26 key issues sorted into four categories: family relationships, relationships with others outside the family, the emotional repercussions of the parents' illness on the child, and issues related to the illness itself and the associated stigma (Murphy, Peters, Jackson, & Wilkes, 2011). Among the common themes identified by the researchers were the following:
• difficult and confusing parental relationships;
• feelings of abandonment;
• "parentification," or the need to take on the parenting role;
• feelings of isolation;
• lack of understanding and support from nonrelatives;
• difficulty trusting others;
• inability to maintain relationships;
• grief;
• low self-esteem; and
• depression.

In addition to these issues, resentment commonly arises among the adult children of people with serious mental illnesses, triggered, Sherman says, by the parents' resistance or failure to get help, their noncompliance with treatment, and the burden of caregiving. "As the offspring have their own families, they often continue to dedicate a lot of time to caregiving, which can be logistical, such as taking the parent to doctor appointments or attending to financial, emotional, and legal issues," says Michelle Sherman, PhD, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School and coauthor of I'm Not Alone: A Teen's Guide to Living with a Parent Who Has a Mental Illness. Also contributing to the pressures of caregiving is the fact that individuals with serious mental illnesses experience a higher than average rate of other medical conditions.

Furthermore, many offspring are troubled by concerns for their own children. "They may be afraid that their children will develop serious mental illnesses as well," says Sherman, who adds that the research is clear that offspring are at an elevated risk.

Whether these problems persist throughout life, Nicholson says, depends on a number of variables. "The impact of a parent's illness on a child or young adult varies depending on the nature and severity of the adult's illness; the extent to which the family has stability, resources, and support; and the extent to which the child or adult has internal resources and supports themselves are all factors that go into the equation of how well a person will do," she explains.

Interventions
Interventions provided in childhood may prevent some, but not all, of the difficulties experienced by the now-adult children of people with serious mental illnesses, Sherman says. "There are a number of promising interventions and a few that have a solid research base," Friesen says. "Interventions range from services such as care coordination to family-based interventions and clinical interventions with adolescents, and families also benefit from practical support, such as income assistance, housekeeping, transportation, and recreation. There are some nice cognitive behavioral prevention programs with some follow-up data showing positive outcomes for youth and decreased rates of depression among kids," she adds, pointing, for example, to the work of William Beardslee, MD, at Harvard University.

Falling Through the Cracks 
Also contributing to lack of services for both parents and children is the remaining stigma surrounding mental health issues. But even when stigma is overcome and helpful interventions exist, many offspring never are able to take advantage of services when they are children or later in life. "These are kids whose issues often do fall through the cracks," Nicholson says. "The first problem is that their parents' problems go unrecognized, so their needs also go unrecognized."

Chief among the obstacles to obtaining care for the adult offspring, Friesen says, may be a "general lack of information and understanding that many people with serious mental illness are parents."

And the flip side of that, Sherman says, is that offspring of parents with serious mental illness, regardless of age, often feel invisible. "They're often ignored and no one asks about the impact of their parent's mental illness on them."

Friesen says, "Lack of funding, proven programs, public and policy-maker understanding, and appropriate professional training, and poor coordination between adult and child mental health services," also contribute. Medicaid funding, she continues, "tends to pay only for services for individuals, not for families, although that is slowly changing."

Sherman adds, the "continued division of funding streams and care for adults and kids" is also a factor.

"The way funding streams are organized around identified parents, the medical model of treatment requires that there be an identified parent with a medically necessary condition to justify payment and reimbursement," Nicholson says. While some of the offspring do have diagnosable mental conditions themselves, many do not. "So unless you're a person whose condition has been identified by a credentialed provider and deemed medically necessary by the rubrics and treatment algorithms that are applied, then there are lots of cracks," Nicholson says.
In addition to lack of programs, lack of access to treatment, and financial barriers is lack of awareness by clinicians of the availability and helpfulness of those services that do exist, Sherman says. And even when children do get treatment, she says, "this doesn't ensure the parent will get or stay in treatment, so the burden can continue."

"Parents often are afflicted by many types of illnesses, and we have huge mega-marathons for breast cancer, for example, and lots of awareness of other kinds of conditions," Nicholson says, "but less support for mental health."

On the positive side, Friesen says, there have been some strides forward. She points to "better research information about effective interventions, some decreased stigma about depression, more studies that directly ask children about their lives, and a move toward broader, more holistic interventions in addition to narrowly focused clinical studies," though she adds that the latter are important, too.

The Research Needs
The major limitations to the research, Friesen says, are the use of "second-hand information, only looking at clinical populations, and a general narrow vision of the problems and solutions." Obstacles, she adds, include a lack of specific funding and interested researchers. Program evaluation or effectiveness studies, she says, can't be done when there are no programs. "Reforms are needed to improve coordination between adult and child mental health services. Researchers in other areas in adult mental health—for example, supported employment, case coordination, medication management—could include parenting issues as part of studies," Friesen says. "There's also much to learn from studies of effectiveness of early intervention, either done by professional mental health workers, allied professionals, or in settings such as Head Start and day care."

Social Workers Can Help 
"The good news is that there are lots of opportunities to provide resources and support, so if you don't catch a child, you catch them when they're older," at the individual, family, or communities level, Nicholson says.

It's a ripe field for social workers, Friesen says, "especially since they take a strengths-based biopsychosocial approach and are more likely than others to focus on the whole person and the whole family."

Experts point to the important role social workers have in advocating for and participating in much-needed policy research. "It's a great fit because social workers are trained to think systemically. They embrace and understand the complexity of community and family life and appreciate the context in which people are living their lives, so their training is consistent with the right kind of approach for teasing apart complex sets of relationships, Nicholson says.

Friesen advises interested social workers to become familiar with the recent literature, "especially that coming out of countries where there's more research and more services addressing these issues, such as Australia, Norway, Sweden, and The Netherlands," and to attend conferences addressing the subject.

"Australia and the United Kingdom are far ahead of the United States of America," Sherman says, "and have many great programs and free resources."

Nicholson agrees that other countries and cultures are ahead of the United States in addressing this issue. "In Norway, Finland, and Sweden," for example, she says, "if a parent is diagnosed with a serious physical or mental illness, providers are obligated to inform their children and provide support."

Sherman and Friesen both direct social workers to the website of Children of Parents with Mental Illness in Australia (www.copmi.net.au), which highlights relevant activities, studies, and services. "Take a sabbatical to Australia," Friesen says, "and get involved." Sherman also suggests that social workers become familiar with the Daughters & Sons Initiative (www.dandsinitiative.org/index.php), which has good information about workshops, online podcasts, and more. Memoirs by offspring, she adds, such as Daughters of Madness: Growing Up and Older with a Mentally Ill Mother, by Susan L. Nathiel, PhD, can also help social workers and others understand the experience of living with a parent with mental illness. Others include Growing Up with a Schizophrenic Mother, by Margaret J. Brown, and The Memory Palace: A Memoir, by Mira Bartok.

"This is a massively understudied area and is most deserving of funding, resources, and research. I think we can collaborate with and learn from colleagues in the United Kingdom who are doing this work," Sherman says. "We need to improve our understanding of changing experiences and the needs of adult offspring over time, available resources, and what could be helpful to support them. Sadly, just as their experiences and needs are typically neglected in childhood, they can become even more neglected in adulthood. The potential to empower offspring may benefit not only them and their ill parents but also potentially support their own children/families," Sherman says.

— Kate Jackson is an editor and freelance writer based in Milford, PA, and a frequent contributor to Social Work Today.

Reference
Murphy, G., Peters, K., Jackson, D., & Wilkes, L. (2011). A qualitative meta-synthesis of adult children of parents with a mental illness. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 20(23-24), 3430-3442

PTSD in Today’s War Veterans: The Road to Recovery

July/Aug 2007

PTSD in Today’s War Veterans: The Road to Recovery
By Richard Currey, PA-C
Social Work Today
Vol. 7 No. 4 P. 13

A stunning public health issue of PTSD in today's war veterans is imminent. Mental health professionals must prepare for the tough road ahead.

When former Army National Guard Captain Jullian Goodrum first began experiencing the symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), he was confused. “I had no idea what was going on. It was as if someone had slipped some sort of bizarre drug into my coffee.” The Knoxville, TN, native found himself haunted by grotesque nightmares and agonizing daytime anxiety. As Goodrum’s symptoms progressed from intermittent and annoying to constant and disabling, he experienced a persistent fatigue and malaise that progressed to a paralyzing depression.

It would ultimately be a civilian psychiatrist who diagnosed Goodrum’s PTSD, underscoring the military’s reticence about combat-related stress and its psychic fallout. Although never an official stance, the Pentagon’s hesitancy to confront and accept what is, in fact, a ubiquitous aspect of combat has been long-standing and detrimental to the health and stability of thousands of service members.

But the times—and both Pentagon and U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) policies—may be changing. Military doctors and combat medics are better educated about the early triggers for PTSD. Combat stress teams—usually medics with additional training in counseling and psychological assessment—now serve on the ground with combat units. A unique pilot program at Walter Reed Army Medical Center has utilized the skills of social workers in pioneering “whole person” post-deployment care for service members struggling with PTSD and other impacts of war. The VA’s National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder has developed an Iraq War Clinician Guide, now in its second edition. And the VA’s Seamless Transition of Returning Service Members initiative is up and running.

“Seamless Transition is a special program created by the VA and designed to specifically address the needs of veterans who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan,” explains Richard H. Selig, PhD, LSCSW, LCMFT. Selig is program manager and coordinator of the Trauma & Transition Resource Program for the VA’s Eastern Kansas Health Care System, which includes two major VA medical centers in Leavenworth and Topeka, KS. The goal of Seamless Transition, described in Congressional testimony by Robert H. Roswell, MD, under secretary for health for the VA, is straightforward: Deliver the highest level of care in a timely manner.

The challenge imbedded in that 10-word mission statement lies in the execution. PTSD, with its many associated issues, impacts families and communities and is predicted by many to soon be overwhelming.

Old Problem, New Name
The diagnostic category now known as PTSD—309.81 in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition—is, of course, a malady as old as war itself and variable as every war’s political era and the unique geography of combat, be it desert, jungle, or city streets. PTSD has gone by many names through the years, from battle fatigue, shell shock, combat exhaustion, acute situation reaction, and even, in World War I, the clanks. Wherever there has been war, there has been individual psychological devastation and the formidable challenges of recovery. And it is here, in the landscape of recovery, that caregivers work to understand the precarious balance between memory and psyche. For clinical social workers, in particular, there is a point in the near future when combat-related stress disorders will touch virtually every facility, institution, hospital, and private practice in America.

The general principles—and devastating outcomes—of PTSD are well-known to most social workers. PTSD has become something of a household term in the last decade, and whether related to combat, an accident, or some other trauma, the results are similar: anxiety, hypervigilance, and impulsive, sometimes violent, behavior undercut by depression, substance abuse, chronic unemployment, emotional numbness, homelessness, and suicide. Recent research points to more than emotional distress at the core of the phenomena, as biochemical pathways are increasingly implicated in the behavioral changes that PTSD generates. As mounting research and collective clinical experience confirms that PTSD is not simply an affliction of battered and limping psyches but a neurological disease as well, the coming national burden of combat-related PTSD was clarified, ironically, by the Army itself.

Looking at mental health problems in veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, Army psychiatrist Charles Hoge, MD, and his colleagues at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research published in 2004 what is now regarded as a landmark study (Hoge, C.W., Castro, C.A., Messer, S.C., et al. [2004]. Combat duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, mental health problems, and barriers to care. N Engl J Med, 351 (1): 13-22).

The Hoge study noted that more than 80% of soldiers and Marines had experienced at least one firefight, with survey respondents reporting “a very high level of combat experiences, with more than 90% reporting being shot at, a high percentage reporting handling dead bodies, knowing someone who was injured or killed, or killing an enemy combatant.” As many as one in six surveyed after returning from Iraq suffered major depression, generalized anxiety, or met formal diagnostic criteria for PTSD.

These observations reflect a combat force exposed to multiple stressors that could far exceed anything seen in recent conflicts. This guarantees a generation of veterans whose psychological needs will trump anything the nation’s healthcare providers have faced in the past. With other subsequent data accruing, it is now generally understood that a stunning public health issue of PTSD is in the offing. As if that were not disturbing enough, the bad news, in the opinion of Matthew Friedman, MD, PhD, director of the VA’s National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, is that “the [Hoge] study underestimated the prevalence of what we are going to see down the road.”

The Hoge study received widespread media attention, rare for a scholarly article published in a journal devoted to research and clinical medicine. But the study spoke to something else—a national concern that transcends statistics about a particular group of combat soldiers. These soldiers, much like those of the Vietnam era, are fighting an increasingly unpopular war. Among the many lessons of Vietnam, one appears to have stayed with us: A war may lose political support, but we cannot abandon that war’s veterans. The emerging challenge for caregivers is recognizing the clinical variations of PTSD, knowing how to address the needs of the veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, and becoming familiar with resources and programs. As the nation’s eyes and hearts turn toward our veterans, these demands will be particularly felt among clinical social workers, who will inevitably see and manage a significant percentage of postdeployment and veteran cases.

A Devastating Detour
Goodrum enlisted in the Navy and served aboard a ship during the first Gulf War. After leaving the Navy to attend college, he realized he missed the order and structure of military life. With an undergraduate degree completed, he returned to uniform, this time as an Army National Guard officer.

“I looked forward to a career,” he says. “I had every reason to think this is where I could make my best contribution in life.” As a platoon commander in Iraq in 2003, Goodrum led security forces tasked with protecting convoys along unprotected (and often unmapped) highways in the interior of Iraq. Despite desert standoffs with insurgents, frequent mechanical breakdowns in hostile territory, attacks on his convoy, and motivating an underequipped, frightened, and stressed-out platoon, Goodrum aimed to do his job, complete his tour, move on to another assignment, and carry on with his career.

It was not to be. Goodrum returned to the United States on other military duties but says he soon found himself in trouble. “I was coming apart at the seams. There were the dreams, the edginess, the constant sense that I had something to fear—as if something or somebody that meant me harm was just around the corner. My mind was no longer my mind. I was going over a cliff,” he explains.

There had been a time, however, that Goodrum remembered seeing himself as invincible, at least psychologically. This attitude is not unusual; indeed, it is virtually a requirement of military service. Many young soldiers imagine that the rigors of battle will be tough but tolerable. They believe—and the military has traditionally institutionalized this belief—that only “weaker” comrades will succumb to some form of PTSD.

This attitude toward the psychological impact of combat hearkens back to an earlier time, exemplified by a notorious episode in World War II when Gen George S. Patton publicly derided—and slapped—a soldier suffering from what we now know was PTSD. Although Patton was compelled to apologize, his apology was more a public relations maneuver than a reflection of official policy. And while neither the Pentagon nor VA have ever formally repudiated PTSD or officially refused to treat affected veterans, an informal perception has long held sway that PTSD is a failing among an unstable few “bad apples.”

Many veterans—Goodrum among them—are eager to correct this misconception. And one way to do so, Goodrum believes, is providing more training, education, and professional support for social workers, psychologists, and psychiatrists throughout the military and VA systems. “First, we need to understand that PTSD can happen to anybody. Second, it’s more common than we think. Consider my case: I was turned away by the Army’s medical system. Turned away or ignored. All the while, my PTSD was brewing unchecked. I’m sure my situation is not all that unique, which suggests a broken system that dishonors all Americans, not just those of us who happened to serve. And, I say, if it’s broke, let’s fix it,” he says.

This is precisely what’s happening at the VA, illustrated in the work of Selig, program manager for, in military parlance, OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom) and OEF (Operation Enduring Freedom) services. “I oversee all Seamless Transition activities,” Selig says, “along with coordination of care and services for all OIF/OEF service members and veterans treated at our facilities.”

In that role, Selig also oversees a range of clinical interventions for reservists and National Guard veterans. “By virtue of a special memorandum of understanding between the VA and the Kansas Army National Guard, we provide interventions and care along a continuum from predeployment, deployment, and postdeployment. While we certainly treat PTSD and related disorders, the emphasis of this program is to begin to intervene with the soldier and family before deployment in order to provide training in the skills and techniques necessary to improve emotional resiliency and strength. We want to improve personal resources in an attempt to help reduce or mitigate the effects of stress—before a soldier ever goes into action.”

Predeployment counseling is, in itself, innovative, but there is another new and complicating element in this war. “The ‘signature’ injury of this war,” says Selig, “is traumatic brain injury (TBI).” This injury results from a kind of mega-concussion, commonly seen in survivors of explosions. TBI-affected individuals can be as debilitated as stroke survivors and must relearn walking, speaking, and simple motor skills. Veterans with concurrent TBI and PTSD are increasingly common, compounding the complexity of care and long-term alternatives. Recognizing that most wounded veterans will not return from the front with only PTSD, “the VA has established a Polytrauma System of Care in order to specifically address issues related to lasting injuries due to polytrauma and TBI,” according to Selig. “The VA polytrauma system is organized around an interdisciplinary model of care delivery. Specialists from several medical and rehabilitation disciplines work together to develop an integrated treatment plan for each veteran.”

Selig says the VA is improving coordination of care for polytrauma veterans with concurrent PTSD by assigning a social work case manager to every patient treated at the polytrauma centers. This case manager coordinates the continuum of care; acts as a point of contact for emerging medical, psychosocial, or rehabilitation problems; and provides psychosocial support and education. “This is all augmented via a new telehealth network that links facilities and ensures that polytrauma and TBI expertise are available throughout the entire system of care,” Selig says.

“In regard to PTSD alone, the VA has over 200 specialized hospital-based PTSD programs,” Selig says. “Here at the Eastern Kansas Health Care System, we have both an inpatient and outpatient PTSD unit in addition to our specialized treatment program designed for reservists and National Guard personnel. And the VA has mandated additional funds, resources, and staff to meet the growing mental health needs of OIF/OEF veterans. Twenty-three new community vet centers have been added to the VA system, and every new enrolling veteran is screened for PTSD as well as TBI.”

Selig agrees that the number of vets in need of mental health services (or related assistance) will rise. “As the incidence of multiple deployments becomes increasingly common,” he says, “soldiers are subjected to longer and multiple tours of duty and are clearly at risk for higher incidences of stress-related disorders.”

But Selig also emphasizes that with help, time, and an organized care management system, most vets confronting PTSD or polytrauma can recover. Goodrum confirms that, one year or more from being “essentially a madman,” he is working his way back home in both body and spirit, relocating heart and soul. If the road has been treacherous, he sees new hope and possibility in the days ahead.

When social workers find themselves working with combat veterans, Selig emphasizes that essential knowledge of and treatment skills in PTSD, as well as TBI, are critical. “But beyond that,” he says, “I would draw on our profession’s history and tradition of assessing and interfacing with an individual in the context of systems—the structure of a person’s life and interactions at familial, community, and organizational levels.” Selig says that combining all these ways that ensure a complete and comprehensive view of an individual is what social workers do, and the multifaceted effects of PTSD are arenas where the skills of social workers are particularly appropriate.

Selig says, “Combat not only affects an individual; it affects everything in that person’s life, everybody they know, everybody that cares about them. Effective treatment and transition from these experiences will require the full and complete understanding of combat and its sequelae.”

— Richard Currey, PA-C, is based in the Washington, D.C., area where he currently works with several agencies within the National Institutes of Health as a writer and consultant.

What To Look For and How to Help
Fred Bush, LMSW, is the returning veteran behavioral care coordinator at the Syracuse (NY) Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center. “Combat stress is as much a community problem as it is an individual issue,” Bush says. “Social workers inside the VA system are passionate about getting the word out about combat-related polytrauma. If we fail to educate providers and raise awareness about this issue, the burden on social service agencies and individual caregivers will be shocking.” Bush offers several key points for social workers who are or will soon encounter combat veterans in their practices, including the following:

• Readjustment issues are expected, but if they persist, returning soldiers should seek help from a mental health professional.

• Acute behavioral changes such as excessive drinking, social isolation, or elevated levels of anxiety signal a need for intervention.

• Soldiers returning from combat tend to sleep lightly for some time, but continued problems sleeping or repeated bad dreams are signs that help is needed.

• Marital readjustment periods after being in a war zone are common. Returning spouses should feel needed and useful and reclaim responsibilities they used to perform, even if the spouse who stayed home has been doing them.

• Returning soldiers need at least one person to talk to about their experiences. Family and friends should make it clear, without excessive nudging or pressure, that they are available and willing to listen. Some soldiers will think they should not share accounts of dangerous or disturbing situations they faced, fearing such stories will unnecessarily disturb friends or family members. It is important to share these stories with the right person and reach out for support.

• Returning soldiers may have been near explosions and may have undiagnosed brain injuries. Unusual, erratic, unexpected, or “out-of-character” behavior could be a red flag indicating a need for intervention.

• Even if you disagree with the politics surrounding the war, be sensitive when talking to returning vets. A “thanks for your service” goes a long way.

For more information about readjustment issues faced by returning soldiers or to find out how to get help, call the Veterans Administration’s TelCare information line at 888-838-7890.

— RC

State of Mind: Evaluating Competency to Stand Trial

July/Aug 2007

State of Mind: Evaluating Competency to Stand Trial 
By David Surface
Social Work Today
Vol. 7 No. 4 P. 17

See how forensic social workers wrestle with professional ethical issues that emerge in determining mental fitness to face prosecution.

In movies and TV shows that focus on the drama of criminal trials, one familiar character is the police psychologist or psychiatrist called to examine the defendant whose mental competency is in question, the learned professional who takes the stand and testifies whether the defendant is mentally capable of standing trial. In real life, however, the professional playing this role is more likely to be a social worker.

Katy Heffernan, MSW, LCSW, is a forensic social worker with the office of the public defender in New Haven, CT. Her interest in forensics has its origins in her family roots. “I come from a family of attorneys and teachers,” she says, “and I’ve always been interested in people who get arrested and why that happens. At the time when I first wanted to be a forensic social worker, I thought that was what forensic social work entailed.”

Heffernan recalls walking into the law and psychiatry department in the New Haven mentalhealth center and saying, “I want to work in forensics.” A social worker looked at her and said, “Well, what does that mean?” Heffernan laughs, “And I said, ‘I have no idea, but I know I want to do it.’ And that started my education.”

Like the young Heffernan, many social workers have only a spotty knowledge of what forensicsocial work is all about. Child custody issues involving separation, divorce, neglect, termination of parental rights, the implications of child and spousal abuse, juvenile and adult justice services, corrections, and mandated treatment—these are just some of the wide range of court proceedings in which forensic social workers are involved. One of the most interesting and challenging is evaluating for competency to stand trial.

The Competency Evaluation Process
The process of evaluating whether a client is competent to stand trial involves two major areas. First, clients must understand the legal proceedings against them, what they’ve been charged with, what the roles of the different court personnel are, the difference between pleading guilty and not guilty, and what accepting a plea bargain means.

The second factor is the clients’ ability to assist in their own defense. Are they able to work with their attorneys and take an active part of their own defense? “Without those understandings,” explains Heffernan, “it isn’t ethical for someone to go before a judge and enter any kind of a plea. The competence statute really protects people’s rights.”

The duties of forensic social workers who evaluate for competency to stand trial vary from state to state. In Nevada, for instance, social workers can evaluate competency to stand trial on misdemeanor cases. Tom Durante, LCSW, is director of social work at Lake’s Crossing Center for the Mentally Disabled Offender, a forensic mental health center for the state of Nevada. “What we do is gather a little historical background about clients’ mental health histories and their mental status—how they’re doing that day,” Durante explains. “Then, finally, there’s the competency evaluation, which is seeing if they know their charges, know their attorney, and know the legal system well enough to stand trial.”

Heffernan works on the front lines of forensic evaluation. “Clients come into my court and, sometimes, they are too paranoid and they can’t participate. Maybe they’re responding to internal stimuli or voices and aren’t able to attend to the information. I try to work with people to find out if they know where they are, why they’re here. I evaluate and give my opinion as to whether there needs to be an order from the court.”

If a client’s mental status is in question, the social worker tells the defense attorney who then brings the issue to the judge. Alternately, the state’s attorney or the judge could raise the issue. The judge then issues a court order mandating the office of forensic evaluation to do a formal competence to stand trial evaluation.

While a formal evaluation is often done by a psychiatrist working alone, in states such as Connecticut, the evaluation is performed by a team of mental health professionals, including a psychiatrist and psychologist; this team is often led by a forensic social worker. “I talk with the team who’s going to do the formal evaluation,” explains Heffernan. “Then I step out at that point.”

After the formal evaluation of competence to stand trial, the next phase is often “restoration,” in which clients are sent to a particular setting, most often a hospital, where they are “restored to competence.” Clients are usually in the hospital for 60 to 90 days for the initial restoration, during which time they not only undergo a full evaluation by psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers but also attend class to learn about the court process so they face their charges as a competent person.

Social workers are also frequently involved in the restoration process. First, a clinical social worker on the hospital unit assesses mental functioning and other clinical issues. In addition, a second social worker may fill the role of “forensic monitor,” working in concert with the clinicalsocial worker but with a focus on assessing the client’s competence to stand trial. This social worker typically writes the report that ultimately goes to the court. If the defense attorney or state’s attorney doesn’t agree that the client is now competent to face charges, social workers in the position of forensic monitor may be asked to testify in court to defend their report.

The Forensic Track: Blazing Your Own Trail
In Connecticut, Heffernan explains, there is no formal academic track for a social worker who wants to pursue forensic work, “so I made up my own.”

At that early point in her career, Heffernan had been thinking that she would get a degree in forensic psychology. But after meeting with people in the outpatient clinical, secure hospital, and state lab settings, everyone advised her to get a social work degree.

“In Connecticut, the licensed clinical social workers are valued pretty highly,” says Heffernan. “They can get degrees on par with other people who have PhDs because of the extra training they go through with the social work degree and then the two years of training afterwards for the licensure. In this state, we’re fortunate that they really do respect the academic work that goes into becoming an LCSW.”

Early Choices: Finding the Forensic Path
Durante describes how he first became involved in this line of work. “I was actually first introduced to forensic social work in 1988 when I was offered a position as a private contractor here at the agency I work with now.” Durante worked at Lake’s Crossing Center for one year, during which time he absorbed knowledge about the process of evaluating clients for competency to stand trial. Although he went on to work in the civil hospital setting, he came back to forensics. “I found it to be a fascinating field,” he says.

“I liked doing psychology work, and I also liked working in the criminal justice field,” says Heffernan. “And I was looking for something that would combine the two.” Heffernan had worked with adults with profound mental illness, substance abuse, and cognitive disabilities and had developed a good background in psychiatric difficulties. But what was missing was the criminal justice aspect. “So,” says Heffernan, “I just started calling people and asking if I could have interviews.”

Heffernan met with people at the Whiting Forensic Institute, a secure hospital lockdown setting where people who are acquitted of serious charges for reasons of insanity are held for restoration to competency. “So I met with them,” she says. “I went to the forensic lab just to see what was out there and what would satisfy my clinical side and my interest in criminal justice.” Heffernan ended up with a master’s degree in social work and focused her field placements within forensic settings.

In one setting, she was involved with the initial evaluation for competence to stand trial; in another, she was involved in the restoration to competence. In still another setting, she participated in homeless outreach where she worked with clients with a multitude of psychiatric issues. “Then I applied for a position in the public defender’s office, and when one opened up, they called me,” she says.

Heffernan still works in the public defender’s office in what is known as the high court, or part A. “The people who come here are accused of felonies,” explains Heffernan. “I work with seven attorneys, three investigators, and three secretaries. I’m the only social worker in the office. It’s very interesting work because you never know what the client’s issues are going to be. My job is to assess the clients and see if they’re suffering from any kind of disability or substance abuse issue, if they’re victims of sexual assault themselves, if they’ve been arrested for sexual assault.”

Heffernan’s job takes her to a variety of settings, some of which many other social workers never get to see. Because the majority of her clients are incarcerated for serious felonies, such as murder, rape, robbery, and arson, Heffernan meets with clients in the lock-up of courthouses where they come to be arraigned or in hospitals where they’ve been admitted for various reasons. “I also meet with clients in various jails and prisons,” says Heffernan. “Unfortunately, in Connecticut, we have quite a few.”

Ethical Dilemmas: Legal vs. Clinical Agendas
Occasionally, the social worker and attorney’s agendas may conflict. “Let’s say you have a defendant who is a minor child, and the department of children and families has recommended that he go into a treatment program,” explains Heffernan. “Let’s also say that there’s an opening in the treatment program, but he has to enter it immediately in this very short time frame or else he goes to the bottom of the list. In order for the child to be released for treatment, he has to understand what’s going on and plead guilty for the judge to bond him out.

“But what if the social worker or the attorney doesn’t feel the child is capable of understanding the charges against him and is therefore not competent to stand trial? The problem is that it’s obviously not protecting his legal rights to just go ahead and put him in the treatment facility if it means he has to plead guilty to a charge he doesn’t understand. As a social worker, I’d absolutely want to make sure that he got the clinical treatment he needs, but as a worker within the legal system, I have to recognize that this isn’t in his best interests. I need to make sure he’s protected legally,” she continues.

Ideally, the social worker and attorneys work together to procure the best legal outcomes for the client. Unfortunately, this sometimes clashes with what the social worker believes is the bestclinical disposition for the client.

Heffernan tells of her own introduction to the kind of conflicts that can arise between legal agendas and social work priorities. “I had a case with this young woman and felt that she needed to be in a partial hospital program and also needed to be on medication and that these needed to be conditions of her probation. We wanted to recommend this to the court because we felt that would be the way she’d be most successful in her life and not come back into the court system,” she explains. “And the attorney came to me and took my file and said, ‘OK, I’m going to put this in her file. If she violates her probation and comes back, we’ll go with this plan.’ And I was very confused. I said, ‘No, this is what needs to happen.’ And then he told me that he’d just been before the judge and had gotten her a youthful offender disposition, which is a kind of probation which if the conditions are not violated for a year, the charge will not appear on your record. And he said, ‘As much as I agree with what you’re saying, and as much as I think that these conditions might enable her not to come back, I can’t do my job as a defense attorney if I agree to putting five or six conditions onto a probation that she might violate, then she’d come back and that charge would be on her record.’ So that was a huge education for me.”

There is another kind of ethical dilemma that forensic social workers may encounter while conducting evaluations of competency to stand trial; one that, in theory, poses a potential threat to the social worker’s career.

In Connecticut, there is a legal opinion written that public defendant social workers on the defense team are not mandated reporters and communications between the social worker and the client fall under the client-attorney confidentiality. “So if a client says to me, ‘Yes, I did this crime and I also molested a child last year,’ in a different setting, I would report that to department of children and families and start an investigation,” explains Heffernan. “But in this setting, I’m not allowed to do that.”

Fortunately, client-attorney confidentiality does not extend to crimes that may take place in the future, so social workers—like attorneys—are bound to report when their client makes a specific threat. “If the person says, ‘I’m going to leave and go molest someone,’ then the social worker, just like the attorney, has a duty to report that and warn the person. But in a treatment setting, if a client had said to me, ‘I molested my daughter two years ago, but I’m not doing it now,’ and she’s a minor, I would then have to report that,” she explains.

Shelly Bryant, LCSW, who also does competency evaluations at Lake’s Crossing Center, believes there is a substantive difference in the kinds of communication that pass between a client and a social worker in both a clinical and legal setting.

“Typically, a lot of what social workers talk about is confidential, but there’s no confidentiality in a competency evaluation. The kinds of things that we report to the court and the attorneys are very different from the kinds of things that a client tells a social worker in confidence,” Bryant says.

Durante’s perspective on the potential ethical conflicts in forensic social work is based on his understanding of who the forensic social worker’s client actually is. “With competency to stand trial, ultimately our client is the court,” says Durante. “We’re not taking a side—we’re assessing.”

Despite the fact that forensic social workers are not technically supposed to be working on behalf of the defendant, Durante does see his job as having a positive benefit for the people he’s called on to evaluate.

“At the same time, I think that part of our role in doing an evaluation in a professional manner is that, ultimately, we’re protecting who would be unfairly tried if they were unable to assist in their own defense,” says Durante. “So even though I do feel that we are a neutral party, at the same time, we are protecting individuals who are incompetent through our professional recommendations to the court.”

Social Workers and Forensics: A Good Match
Patrick Marquis, LCSW, who works with Durante at Lake’s Crossing Center, agrees that social workers offer unique perspectives and abilities that make them highly suited to forensic social work in general and evaluating competency to stand trial in particular.

“Part of our generalized education in social work probably gives us more of a systematic perspective than other disciplines,” says Marquis. “It’s such a focal point of our education to look at the person in the environment and how that has helped shape who they’ve become today—that may be a slant that we’re able to focus on more than other disciplines.”

Marquis points out that social workers have a particular and extensive knowledge base that helps them not only evaluate the client’s current status but also make choices and predictions about the client’s future. “We also have a good knowledge of the community resources that are available for a client who is going to be processed through the legal system. I think it’s crucial that we know what that client is going to need once the legal part is complete,” he says.

What initially surprised Heffernan was how social workers take the lead on the competency evaluation team. “The teams are very comprehensive with all the disciplines—the psychiatrist, the recreational therapist, and the psychologist,” says Heffernan. “I like where the social workers are situated within those teams. By virtue of being a social worker, you’re looking at the details within the whole picture, and when you go the psychology route, it’s much more narrowly focused, so it appealed to me to be aware of that narrow focus, but to be aware of the bigger picture.”

— David Surface is a freelance writer and editor based in Brooklyn, NY. He is a frequent contributor to Social Work Today.

Career advice
What kind of advice would these professionals offer to social workers interested in working within the legal system?

“Don’t be afraid to call people who are already in the field,” says Katy Heffernan, MSW, LCSW. “Don’t just look at books; talk to people who are doing it, find out how it works and what’s the best way to be prepared. That was the most helpful thing to me, and I find it’s the most rewarding thing to me now when people call me and say, ‘Can you tell me about your job?’ I don’t think there’d be one professional who’d say ‘I can’t help you’ if they’re approached by somebody who really wants to pursue a career in this area.”

Forensic social work seems to be gathering more respect. This year, Heffernan is being honored by the National Association of Social Workers as the outstanding social worker of the year from Connecticut. “Sometimes people look at forensic social work and say, ‘How can you work with people who aren’t victims?’ So it’s nice that, with all the various disciplines within social work, this year the award is going to forensic social work.”

Patrick Marquis, LCSW, points out that the kind of experience and knowledge that social workers gain while working within the legal system can have long-ranging benefits for social workers and their clients—even beyond the field of forensics.

“Even if we ever do branch off or move on to other fields, our knowledge of the legal system and how it works, how our clients interact with the legal system, how the legal system can work for or against them will be of great benefit to our clients in general,” Marquis says.

— DS

Saying Goodbye to Spot: Pet Loss Bereavement

July/Aug 2007

Saying Goodbye to Spot: Pet Loss Bereavement
By Lynn K. Jones, DSW
Social Work Today
Vol. 7 No. 4 P. 26

Furry or feathered, a pet's death must be respected with the same reverence as the loss of a beloved family member.

Jennie couldn’t sleep, lost her appetite, and was overcome by waves of grief that caused her to burst into tears at work and in public places. She exhibited the classic symptoms of grief for a loved one. In addition to feeling guilty, she was consumed with anger. But Jennie wasn’t grieving the loss of her spouse or a close family member; she was grieving for her pet Schnauzer, Jezabel.

In the wake of the tainted pet food incident, thousands are suffering from the loss of their pets. What compounds the grief for many is that they are grieving alone, feel silly for being so upset, and are burdened by the belief that they may have caused their pet’s death.

Silly or Not? 
Is the depth of grief that Jennie experienced normal? Susan Cohen, DSW, director of the human-animal bond program at the Animal Medical Center in New York City, says we now understand that deep grief in response to a pet’s loss is the norm, not the exception. People who have lost a pet experience the same range of grief responses as people who have lost a human companion.

The idea that humans and animals bond with one another is as familiar as the childhood stories of Lassie, Toto, and Black Beauty. The main characters of our grade school readers were Dick, Jane, and Spot. We have loved, been amused, and been charmed by Snoopy and Garfield. And recently, the escapades of the beloved yellow Labrador, Marley, captivated us in the New York Times bestseller.

But even though we have been socialized to understand the human-animal bond, we still fail to fully grasp how intense it is. Linda Peterson, ACSW, a Pennsylvania social worker who has been involved in pet loss counseling since 1989, says, “Our society doesn’t sanction deep, extended grief for a pet. I see quite a few people, even people in their 30s and 40s, who have not been through the loss of anyone close to them—human or animal. When they get hit with these tremendously overwhelming feelings [over the death of a pet], they feel ashamed. They just aren’t prepared for the depth of their feelings.”

Cohen agrees. ”When I first started doing this work, 50% of my job was telling people, ‘No, you are not crazy.’ Now, 25 years later, many more people are aware of this relationship, how important it is, and that people are very sad when their pet dies. They understand that they are not weird.”

Unconditional, Positive Regard
Pet owners experience a sense of unconditional, positive regard from their pets that most people find life-expanding. “When you lose your pet, you lose someone who thinks you are wonderful just the way you are,” says Cohen, “somebody who doesn’t care if you gained 30 pounds or lost money in the stock market—all the things that our human companions care about.”

For some people, their relationship with their pet may have been their only experience of unconditional, positive regard, says Linda L. Lawrence, MSW, LMSW, a social worker at Michigan State University College of Veterinary Medicine. “Our pets are always happy to see us and run to greet us at the door. They don’t hold grudges against us. They are always there. That is meaningful to everybody but especially to someone whose pet plays a central role in their life—a latchkey child, for example.”

But pets play more than a just psychological role in people’s lives. “The simple act of petting an animal has been shown to lower blood pressure by inducing an instant relaxation response,” says Alan Beck, ScD, director of the Center for the Human-Animal Bond at the Purdue University School of Veterinary Medicine in Indiana. “And animal owners have a higher one-year survival rate following a heart attack and lower cholesterol levels than those without pets—even when they have the same levels of exercise.” It turns out that pets are good for both people’s heads and hearts. When people lose them, they suffer not just a psychological stress but a physiological one, too.

Pets Are Family
Beck says that people view their pets, especially dogs and cats, as members of the family. He cites the way people behave with their pets. They carry photographs in their wallets and have pictures on their desk at the office right along with the pictures of their families. They include their pet in their Christmas card picture. People name their pets, talk to them, and often refer to themselves as “mom” and “dad.” They plan part of their day around their pets. They don’t begrudge discretionary spending for their pets. “These are behaviors that you reserve for members of your family,” says Beck.

Cohen agrees. “We think of them as members of our family, sort of like children but even better than children because they are more innocent.” The impact of losing a pet—considered a member of a family, like an innocent child—because it was fed tainted food is immense. “These are people who fed their pet food that caused their innocent animal to die—that is very, very difficult for people,” she says.

Guilt and anger when losing a loved one are typical reactions, but in the pet food incident, they may be severe. “As is often the case when there is some kind of accident, you really are not culpable, but at the same time, you feel culpable,” says Beck. “I think the recall is probably that way. People are probably thinking to themselves, ‘I really should have read those labels. I should have switched foods. I should have been more observant.’ I think most people were caught by surprise. I suspect that it was spotted pretty quickly, but that doesn’t stop the guilt.” Cohen adds, “Because we see pets as very innocent and very dependent on us, we feel extra responsible.”

There is a difference between a loss that is anticipatory and one that is traumatic, suggests Beck. “One of the problems with the food issue is that people didn’t have time to mobilize their feelings and start the mourning process in a healthy way. Whereas, if you know that your animal is going to die in a few weeks, then you spend some extra special time together. It makes it a little easier,” he says.

How Long Will the Grief Last?
Cohen says that how long the grief lasts after losing a pet has not been carefully studied, and everyone is different. “It is clear that for some people, losing a pet is a big trauma. It is a big loss like any other big loss, and they will never be the same again,” she says.

The fact that it can take a long time “is where people get hung up,” says Peterson. “They say, ‘I have been upset for a couple of days or a week or two weeks, and I have to get beyond this. It is going on too long.’ I tell them that it is an individual thing. The more you loved your pet, the longer it is going to take to get through these feelings.”

Cohen says the duration of the grief often depends on what else is going on in the person’s life at the same time. This has also been Lawrence’s experience: “If you are going through multiple stresses at the same time, if you are going through a divorce, or recently lost your job, or have a family member who is ill and you have a pet die, that is going to compound the amount of time that the grief will last.”

Sometimes, the pet is the last link to a lost relationship. “I have had people who have lost a pet that was left to them by their children or that was part of their life before their spouse died. It is the last living connection to that child or spouse, and so their grief and their sadness and depression is huge,” explains Lawrence.

It may be especially painful for older people to lose a pet. For some, their pet is a cherished companion that has given them a reason to keep living. At a time when they are experiencing the death of friends, losing their pet could also be catastrophic. Because their pet may have been the sole focus of their attention and affection and may have been a substantial part of their daily routine, the loss they feel may be especially intense.

Beck suggests that most people recover from a pet loss sooner than a human loss. One reason may be that the major changes in one’s life that often accompany a human loss don’t occur when you lose an animal. “Things like your economy and where you live may change when you lose a spouse, for example, but aren’t a factor when you lose your pet. There are some studies that show that how long you have had the animal has some influence on the duration and the impact of the loss,” says Beck.

What About a New Pet?
Experts concur that the choice of whether or not to get a new pet soon after the loss of a pet is an individual decision based on what feels right to the pet owner in each situation. However, most also agree that the suggestion that a grieving pet owner should automatically replace the lost pet is a reflex that should be avoided. “Pets are not just a box of Kleenex, something that you can just go out and buy another one and have the same experience. They have their own personalities. Pets are spontaneous, and they do things that make you laugh, they surprise you with their love and their acceptance of you, and that makes them different,” says Cohen.

Beck says the suggestion that you should “just get another pet” is as inappropriate as saying, “I heard you lost your husband. By the way, I have a brother who is just right for you.” Beck has found that it takes people roughly two years before they replace their pet. However, some people want to do it right away. Some people want to replace their pet with the same breed all the time. Some want to maintain the original memory of their pet and switch breeds to avoid competition. According to Beck, both responses are common, but the loyalty to one breed is more common.

Peterson doesn’t encourage people to run right out and get another pet primarily because it takes a lot of energy to bring a new pet into the home at a time when energy is drained from grieving. The new pet is not going to be like the other pet; people are still remembering the pet that died and comparing the two, and in Peterson’s experience, that doesn’t work. Too often, people who have adopted a new pet too soon end up returning the pet or not being able to keep it, which is an added guilt factor. “That is another trauma, and you don’t want to set yourself up for that,” she says.

Supporting a Pet Owner in Loss
When social workers are confronted with a client bereft from the loss of a pet, “the most important thing is be accepting without judgment,” says Beck. “Regardless of your own personal feelings, owning a pet is very important to many people [approximately 60% of Americans own a pet] and very much part of the family community.”

“Most people who are grieving from the loss of a pet improve when someone is able to listen to them and not think that they are crazy,” says Cohen. Pet loss support groups have proved enormously helpful for many, especially for those who don’t have someone with whom to share the loss (see sidebar).

Considering the depth of feeling that people experience when they lose their pets and the numbers of pets that have been lost to the pet food incident, the impact of this crisis is devastating. Jennie and the others who are grieving for their pets will, for the most part, get better. Lawrence gives important advice: “Anyone suffering from the loss of their pet should be treated as though it was a human being that was lost, and they should be provided the same grief and loss services that you would to a person who lost their spouse, or child, or another family member.”

— Lynn K. Jones, DSW, is a freelance writer and an executive coach and organizational consultant in Santa Barbara, CA. As a specialist in organizational culture, she supports leaders and organizations in developing mission-driven cultures.

Pet Loss Support Groups
In her early career working with individuals with disabilities, Susan Cohen, DSW, observed the strong bond between humans and animals. Appreciating the important role that pets played in her clients’ lives, she established one of the first counseling programs in a veterinary hospital and the first pet loss support group. Now, collaborations between veterinary schools and social work programs exist around the country, as do pet loss support groups.

Pet loss support groups have proved a comforting place to share feelings such as confusion, sadness, and guilt with others in a compassionate environment. Cohen says that one way pet loss support groups are helpful is that people grieving a pet’s death hear how others are handling the process.

“They are often told by their friends and family that they did everything they could for their pet and they tend to discount it. ‘They are just saying that to me to make me feel better.’ But when they hear someone in their group say those things, they can see that they are beating themselves up unnecessarily and then they can say to themselves, ‘Wow, I think that guy did everything and look how hard he is being on himself. Maybe I am being too hard on myself.’ You can’t tell them that, but they can see it in someone else. And they can let themselves off the hook,” Cohen explains.

— LKJ

Pet Loss Resources
The Animal Medical Center
New York, NY
212-838-8100
www.amcny.org
Support groups and counselor referrals for the New York City area

Companion Animal Association of Arizona, Inc.
Scottsdale, AZ
602-258-3306
www.caaainc.org
A 24-hour grief-counseling hotline, support groups, and referrals

The Delta Society
Bellevue, WA
425-679-5500
www.deltasociety.org
Publishes 20-page Nationwide Pet Bereavement Directory

PetFriends, Inc.
Moorestown, NJ
800-404-PETS (7387)
Returns long-distance calls collect; free for residents of southern New Jersey and the Philadelphia area

St. Hubert’s Animal Welfare Center
Madison, NJ
973-377-7094
www.sthuberts.org