Trio offers help for ‘Veterans in Crisis’

A trio of war veterans quite familiar with the battlefields from previous wars is now on a mission to save lives in what may be the greatest battle they’ve ever encountered.

Dr. Steve Lansing, Wayne Quist and Cliff Reynolds are traveling around Minnesota to reduce the rate of veteran suicide. They are doing it through a series of books, “Veterans in Crisis,” which focuses on veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD.

Lansing, a Rochester-based psychologist with Empowerment Treatment Center, estimates that up to 25% of the 4 million veterans who served in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts suffer from PTSD and have serious mental health issues that are largely going undiagnosed.

To illustrate his point of how serious PTSD has become, the group pointed out how 7,000 lives were lost in combat since 9/11. However, during that same time, the lives of 300,000 veterans have been lost to suicide.

Many veterans with PTSD suffer “deep moral injury,” Quist said. “They were taught ‘thou shall not kill,’” he said, adding many have faced the reality of killing other people.

Quist cautions people about putting too much stock in statistics released by the Veterans Administration regarding PTSD and suicide. “Stats coming out of the VA are worthless,” he said. He added many of the suicides listed by medical examiners are categorized as “other” with no further explanation, skewing the seriousness of the problem.

“Our mission is suicide prevention,” Quist said, noting sobriety is the first step to successful PTSD recovery. “One of the problems with PTSD is they don’t want to talk about it,” he added.

Lansing offers free therapy for veterans, and it comes with an important bonus. “It’s vets talking to other vets,” he said.

The three are bringing their compelling presentation on PTSD to the Owatonna Arts Center on Saturday, Oct. 18 from 1-4 p.m. They will reveal details about the three books they have written, including the history of PTSD from the beginning of time, Joe’s Story of untreated trauma during World War II and PTSD, Jesse James and the church that Jesse built.

Quist, who served in the Vietnam War, has dealt with his own bouts of PTSD for years with little to no help initially from his superiors. “If I had told my commander how I felt, I would have been grounded,” he said. “You feel you are crazy. The easiest remedy was what my World War II vet told me… to just have another drink. That’s what we all do.”

That advice has led Quist and many other veterans down a dangerous path. Many have developed serious addictions to alcohol. In Quist’s case, he successfully completed treatment with the Hazelden Foundation 30 years ago.

Lansing said he struggled with college and joined the Air Force. He spent two years in Vietnam with the 7^th Air Force doing intelligence analysis.

On a domestic flight home, a flight attendant dumped a drink on him after learning he had served in Vietnam. She called him a “baby killer.”

Once back home, Lansing went back to college. In 1986, he moved to Rochester to run a suicide hotline where he found one in three callers were veterans. He learned quickly that many Vietnam veterans were dealing with untreated PTSD.

“I tell them they are not crazy,” Lansing said. “You can’t cure PTSD. It never goes away.”

Reynolds fought in the juggles of Vietnam where he served two terms from 1969 to 1971.

Over the past 15 months, the group has put on 40,000 miles, mostly across southern Minnesota. Lansing said one of the critical issues is that mental health providers are lacking in outstate Minnesota. “Eighty-five percent of the mental health providers are in the Twin Cities,” he said.

Currently, the group is focused on a campaign of raising $100,000 to offer Volume One in Ukrainian language within the next year. “Volume One is written at a 10^th grade level and explains how you’re not crazy at all,” Quist said. “Volume One is our bible.”

They are working on a fourth book detailing the detrimental impact PTSD has on couples and families.

Veterans aren’t the only focus for the PTSD book series. The trio also wants to get the books into the hands of first responders and their families as well as the general public to understand the severity of the problem.

They are labeling the upcoming session in Owatonna “as a major community event especially helpful for those who served and for those most affected by the impact of trauma in loved ones, whether from military combat, law enforcement, firefighting or other occupations that bring home the effects of trauma.”

“We look at this as the total community coming together,” Reynolds said. “Our goal is to get the books to as many people as possible,” he added.

Lansing said he knows the work he and his two buddies are doing is having an impact. “We have prevented 13 suicides this year that we know of,” he said.

For more information, go to www.vetsempowered.org.