Overview

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have taken a tremendous toll on the mental health of our troops. In 2005, then-Senator Barack Obama took to the Senate floor to tell his colleagues that many of our injured soldiers are returning from Iraq with traumatic brain injury, which doctors were calling the signature wound of the Iraq War. Alarming stories of veterans taking their own lives raised a host of vital questions: Why hadn't the military been better prepared to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI)? Why were troops being denied care and sent back to Iraq? Why weren't the Army and the VA doing more to address these issues? David Kieran tells the broad and nuanced story of the Army's efforts to understand and address these issues, challenging the popular media view that the Iraq War was mismanaged by a callous military unwilling to address the human toll of the wars. The story of mental health during this war is the story of how different groups approached these issues from different perspectives and with different agendas. It is the story of how the advancement of medical knowledge moves at a different pace than the needs of an Army at war, and it is the story of how medical conditions intersect with larger political questions about militarism and foreign policy.

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Matthew Boston is a New York-based actor with over thirty years of professional experience working in theater, film, television, and voice-over. He received his training from the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Shakespeare & Company, and the Lee Strasberg Institute. David Kieran is Assistant Professor of History and Director of the American Studies concentration at Washington & Jefferson College. He is the author of Forever Vietnam: How a Divisive War Changed American Public Memory, and editor of The War of My Generation: Youth Culture and the War on Terror.

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