Program helps airmen deal with combat stress

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Then-Capt. Craig Bryan, far right, briefs a group of 532nd Expeditionary Security Forces Squadron's quick reaction force airmen at Joint Base Balad, Iraq.


Program helps airmen deal with combat stress
By Erik Holmes - Staff writer
Posted : Sunday Nov 8, 2009 10:10:46 EST

As the former chief of primary care psychology at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, Dr. Craig Bryan has seen more than his share of lives shattered by post-traumatic stress disorder.

Insomnia, nightmares, jumpiness, edginess, depression, stress, short tempers — the symptoms present in airmen returning from combat zones became all too familiar.

So when Bryan — then an Air Force captain and now a civilian researcher — deployed to Balad Air Base, Iraq, as the head of the traumatic brain injury clinic there, he decided to be proactive rather than wait for airmen with psychological problems to come to him.

“If I could teach them (coping skills) from the very beginning … theoretically they would not develop the problems in the first place,” said Bryan, now a researcher at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. “I knew they were not going to come to me … until they were in really bad shape. If they’re not gong to come to me, I’m going to go to them and get this information to them.”

Out of that simple precept was born Defender’s Edge, a cutting-edge mental health program that seeks to help airmen deal with combat stress on their terms. But getting from the idea to an actual program required innovative thinking and a novel approach.


Rest of article at: http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2009/11/airforce_combat_stress_110809w/