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Resilience and Military Psychiatry 35

This approach helps to foster unit cohesion and also provides a forum for

dealing with the shared experience of deployment as a group.
When service members return to their home station aft er experience

in combat, they are confronted by many challenges. Those who have been

exposed to traumatic experiences must find some way to frame and assimilate
their experiences as a cohesive, meaningful narrative that is understandable

within the more general context of civilian life. Often, this challenge is over-

come by understanding difficult experiences as having occurred in the service
of a greater purpose or ideal. However, some service members may still fi nd
it quite difficult to reintegrate into their families and society. Battlefi eld sur-

vival skills such as extreme vigilance may be difficult to turn off, even when

they have maladaptive effects in the context of ordinary civilian life.

The U.S. Army attempts to facilitate its members’ transition from the

battlefield to the home front by utilizing a construct and program now
known as “battlemind” (http://www.battlemind.org/). Battlemind refers to
the soldier’s inner strength to face fear and adversity in combat with courage.

Soldiers receive battlemind briefi ngs after they return home. Th is briefi ng and
others describe and normalize emotional and cognitive changes experienced
by those who have served in combat and forecast the gradual resolution of
resulting emotions. The purpose of this approach is to depathologize emo-

tional difficulties and thereby diminish the resulting anxiety. End-of-tour

training also encourages service members to recognize difficulties and to seek

help early when problems occur.
Immediately after returning home from combat, there is a high potential

for risky thrill-seeking behavior. Service members returning from combat
may drive too fast, purchase new “toys” (e.g., motorcycles or weapons),
become physically aggressive, or test their physical and psychological limits
in other ways. Some become sexually promiscuous in an effort to make up

for lost time or to rebound from a failed or failing relationship. Occasion-
ally, returning service members turn to heavy drinking as a way to relieve
psychological or emotional pain or to test and demonstrate a “hard-living
tough guy” persona. Whether or not returning service members appear to be

suffering from symptoms of stress—in fact, some may think of themselves
as “bulletproof” to stress—dysfunctional behavior is problematic for family
members and colleagues.
The postdeployment period may also require service members to reckon

with losses they have suffered in combat. Memorial services are routinely
held, both in theater and upon return. It is important for service members
to have an opportunity for closure in the form of ritual to recognize and
grieve the loss of fellow warriors. Even when individual memorial services
have been held in theater, it can be extremely helpful to hold a remembrance
service for an entire unit, including the families of those who lost their lives

in combat. This type of service provides an opportunity for survivors to

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