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If you’re a servicemember who has returned to your community after combat duty, what gestures of support were most helpful to you or your family? If you’re a family member, friend, coworker or neighbor, what are your best ideas for helping servicemembers’ re-entry to their home communities be as smooth as possible?
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Structured Decompression

Four years ago I had the opportunity to work with re-deploys in a structured decompression session. The sessions were run through the office of the Chaplain. At the time, my brother-in-law was Chaplain Colonel, and used this research based program to help re-deploys return to their families.

Decompressions were held within the Office of the Chaplains, so that information shared would remain confidential. The decompressions were voluntary, and lasted 2-4 hours each. Each was structured, to give the most possible comfort to the re-deploys.

There were 4 parts - introduction to the decompression techniques (including research overview), discussion from the soldier aobut his assignments, discussion about the soldier’s disappointments, and then discussion about the soldier’s accomplishments. The time ended with further strategies and resources, and specific ideas how to deal with family, friends, and ignorant people.

When my bro-in-law retired, the program did as well. There were many successes - as evidenced by continued contacts with the Chaplains. Family members would also offer success stories - by using strategies taught at a large homecoming celebration.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 28th, 2008 at 10:06 am and is filed under Your ideas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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