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a non-profit, comprehensive,
community mental health service
Understanding Military Culture
JAYME COLLINS, second from right, CEO of Monadnock Family Services, and Chris Selmer, director of MFS’ Adult Day Care Center in Jaffrey, worked with General William Reddel and Major Mary Hennessey, left, of the New Hampshire National Guard at the day-long program focused on Understanding Military Culture.
Monadnock Family Services (MFS) was one of the sponsors of a day-long training program on Understanding Military Culture Tuesday (June 15) for mental health professionals from around the state.
Jayme Collins, the CEO of MFS, welcomed the professionals and the New Hampshire military staff who conducted the session at the Monadnock Covenant Church in West Keene. She discussed the role MFS plays in helping veterans and their families, including the agency’s veteran’s drop-in center at 93rd Street in Keene.
“The selfless men and women who served in military duty gave their best for us,” Ms. Collins told the assembly. “Now, it is our turn to serve them and we must be prepared to give them our best.”
She acknowledged the work by two MFS staff people – Randy Gillispie, director of emergency services, and Chris Selmer, director of the agency’s Adult Day Care Center in Jaffrey – in organizing the training seminar. Gillispie serves on Governor John Lynch’s subcommittee studying the mental health crisis response for veterans and veterans’ suicides. Ms. Selmer’s program received a Veterans Affairs Administration contract to accept and serve veterans in her Adult Day Care program.
In all, 80 mental health professionals from as far away as Exeter in New Hampshire and from Vermont and Massachusetts attended the training program, also sponsored by the New Hampshire National Guard and Reserves, the state Department of Health and Human Services and the state Department of Safety, Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
New Hampshire is preparing this fall for its largest deployment ever of New Hampshire Guardsmen and Reservists – about 2,000 in all. Major Mary Hennessy of Hampton, N.H., who oversees pre- and post-deployment services for the Guardsmen and Reservists, introduced General William Reddel, adjutant general of the New Hampshire National Guard. General Reddel provided an overview of the National Guard and Reserves in New Hampshire.
He also discussed the impact deployment to a combat zone has on returning veterans – one in seven suffer from some form of traumatic brain injury (TBI) or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) – and every day, 18 veterans take their own lives in this country. Military suicides, he said, account for 20 percent of all the suicides in the United States.
These facts, he said, pointed up the need for helping veterans and their families when they return from deployment. He cited President Obama’s signing of legislation that calls for more assistance for veterans, a move, President Obama noted, demonstrated the nation’s “sacred trust” to care for its military veterans.
Jayme Collins, in her opening remarks, pointed out that MFS has had a long history of working with veterans on their mental health issues and is in the process of broadening that service.
Major Hennessey took the audience through the steps involved in preparing troops and their families for deployment, assistance available to them during deployment and services offered when the troops return and rejoin their families.
She said that New Hampshire has one of the most extensive services available for military service people and their families. And New Hampshire has one person in the Department of Health Human Services – Jo Mancher – designated fulltime to work with military families, the only state in the nation with someone assigned this task, Major Hennessey noted.
The audience also heard from Guardsmen who have returned from deployment and family members who have dealt with deployment and its aftermath.
The Keene program was the 9th in a series offered around the state. More will be scheduled beginning in the fall, after the latest deployment.
Two MFS volunteers – Victoria Cotton-Cowly and Verne Greene – greeted conference attendees and provided them with background material for the day’s session.
Keene Sentinel - Learning to Cope
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