The speakers at our May 31, 2018 Rotary lunch were Mike Kerley of Road Home, the Care Center for Veterans and their Families at Rush University Medical Center, and Danny C., a veteran and participant in Road Home programs.  Mike is the Road Home outreach manager and described how service members have been impacted by the invisible wounds of war. Since 9/11, over 2 million service members have been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and 850,000 of those deployed have been deployed at least twice; 31% of those deployed suffer from PTSD or a similar war-induced mental health issue.  As many as 20 veterans per day commit suicide, and between 2005-2009 an active duty service member committed suicide every 36 hours.  The goal of Road Home is to provide the necessary care to service members and their families to heal the invisible wounds of war and reduce these statistics.  One of the major programs of Road Home is the intensive outpatient program (IOP), which is a three-week in patient program that includes a holistic approach (including yoga and nutrition), individual therapy, and group therapy.  The final week of IOP involves the participation of family members that will have the biggest impact on the participant’s healthy recovery.

 

Danny C. delivered an emotional message about Road Home that left us all speechless.  He spoke of his combat experiences in Afghanistan and how those experiences have resulted in significant post dramatic stress disorder for him.  In short, Danny’s life and relationships were destroyed as a result of his experiences in Afghanistan, and he has found that only Road Home allowed him to be able to start to recover.  In Danny’s words, Road Home “saved his life.”  Especially helpful to Danny was the education he received at Road Home about his symptoms from people who really cared, and even the fact that the Road Home chaplain is ex-special forces.  Rotary members can help Road Home by completing IOP participant welcome bags (we stuffed 100 bags after lunch), volunteering for IOP outings, donating funds to host dinners at the IOP guest house, and donating tickets to area sporting and cultural events.  For more information, see https://roadhomeprogram.org/