When Johnny and Jane Come Marching Home: How All of Us Can Help Veterans

A psychologist's impassioned call to stop labeling our traumatized war veterans as mentally ill and a guide to how every citizen can help returning vets.

Traumatized veterans returning from our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are often diagnosed as suffering from a psychological disorder and prescribed a regimen of psychotherapy and psychiatric drugs. But why, asks psychologist Paula J. Caplan in this impassioned book, is it a mental illness to be devastated by war? What is a mentally healthy response to death, destruction, and moral horror? In When Johnny and Jane Come Marching Home, Caplan argues that the standard treatment of therapy and drugs is often actually harmful. It adds to veterans' burdens by making them believe wrongly that they should have "gotten over it"; it isolates them behind the closed doors of the therapist's office; and it makes them rely on often harmful drugs. The numbers of traumatized veterans from past and present wars who continue to suffer demonstrate the ineffectiveness of this approach.

Sending anguished veterans off to talk to therapists, writes Caplan, conveys the message that the rest of us don't want to listen—or that we don't feel qualified to listen. As a result, the truth about war is kept under wraps. Most of us remain ignorant about what war is really like—and continue to allow our governments to go to war without much protest. Caplan proposes an alternative: that we welcome veterans back into our communities and listen to their stories, one-on-one. (She provides guidelines for conducting these conversations.) This would begin a long overdue national discussion about the realities of war, and it would start the healing process for our returning veterans.

Paula J. Caplan, a clinical and research psychologist, is an Associate at Harvard University's DuBois Research Institute, Hutchins Center, and a former Fellow at the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School. She is the author of The Myth of Women's Masochism, They Say You're Crazy: How the World's Most Powerful Psychiatrists Decide Who's Normal, and eight other books. Her articles, essays, and op-eds have appeared in both scholarly and popular publications, and she is a frequent media commentator and invited speaker. She is also an award winning playwright and filmmaker, as well as an actor and director.