Treating Young Veterans: Promoting Resilience Through Practice and Advocacy

The editors of Treating Young Veterans and the authors of the individual chapters [provide] practitioners with essential information about the needs, desires, and possibilities for veteransÖand their families. This book represents a thoughtful, sensitive, and sensible approach to working with military personnel and veterans who have been deployed to wars in the Persian Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

From the Foreword by Peter B. Vaughan
Dean, Graduate School of Social Service
() Fordham University, New York, NY

Many veterans unsuccessfully attempt to self-manage their mental and physical health needs. This volume examines the multiple challenges awaiting the new generation of young veterans returning to civilian life, and provides strategies for mental health professionals to assist them in the process of readjustment. It incorporates multidisciplinary, state-of-the-art research to present practice and advocacy opportunities that facilitate a healthy and socially engaged reintegration into society for both traditional veterans (enlisted and career military personnel) and nontraditional veterans (reservists, national guardsmen, and women) aged 18 to 40 years.

The volume is divided into three sections: Assessment and Practice Approaches to Promote Resilience; Outreach and Practice With Special Communities, and Advocacy Practice to Promote Young Veterans' Well-Being. Each section includes an introduction highlighting the chapters, and an epilogue delineating important steps in practice, outreach, and advocacy.

Key Features:

• Targets the specific needs of veterans of the Iraqi and Afghani conflicts
• Includes chapters on women and sexual trauma in the military and homeless combat veterans
• Addresses the special needs of children of veterans and the nature of ambiguous loss as "veteran-by-proxy," employment issues, and equity issues related to reservists
• Authored by recognized experts including military officers, attorneys, and Veterans Affairs administrators
• Designed for both general and scholarly readers

Diann Cameron Kelly, PhD, is an Associate Professor at Adelphi University, School of Social Work, Garden City, New York.

Sydney Howe-Barksdale, PhD, JD, is the Director of the Public Interest Resource Center and a Professor of Legal Methods at Widener University School of Law in Wilmington, Delaware.

David Gitelson, DSW, LCSW, is Director, Social Work Department, VA Hudson Valley Health Care System, Montrose, NY, Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine, and Senior Adjunct Professor, Adelphi University, School of Social Work.