He'll provide first aid on the home front
Kenneth Reich's expertise in families has made watching the Iraq war particularly difficult. While others think of American soldiers as part of a military unit, Reich, a psychoanalyst, sees them in terms of the family unit, and for two years he's been yearning to treat military families.
''Troops returning from deployment are almost all wounded in some way, physically, psychologically or both," Reich said. ''Their families are also real, and often invisible, casualties of war."
Separation and anxiety put stress on marriages and often make children resent their far-off parents. The war is one giant family problem, he said.
Reich, 57, cofounded SOFAR: So Good (Strategic Outreach to Families of Army Reservists), a volunteer group of 60 local psychoanalysts dedicated to treating relatives of National Guard and Army Reserve troops who have served in the war. Reich's pilot program was launched this month, after two years of negotiations with the military, and has begun to receive its first referrals from the Boston-based 883d Medical Company of the Army Reserves.
The group is focusing on the families of non-active-duty soldiers, Reich said, because they have had comparatively little access to mental health services.
In talking with soldiers and officers about the need for a program like SOFAR, Reich came to understand that ''it wasn't about the war. It wasn't about soldiering," he said. ''It was about families."
Too often, Reich said, psychoanalysts forget to look beyond their own couches, failing to think about how therapy affects the families of their patients.
He learned to pay attention to the whole family and their home environment when, as an intern, he was assigned to a family whose members were psychiatrically hospitalized more often than any other in the Massachusetts General Hospital system.
They kept canceling their appointments with flimsy excuses; one day when they called to say they were busy moving in a new refrigerator, Reich offered to come over and help. From then on, he carried out therapy sessions around their kitchen table, treating the entire family.
He had two brushes with terrorism that helped him focus his concerns on the mental health problems caused by war, even on those who are not soldiers. During the first Gulf War, Reich was in Israel, teaching a one-week course on psychoanalysis when Iraqi Scud missiles rained down on the country. ''I remember hearing many stories both clinical and personal about what the impact of the incoming Scuds from Iraq was on the population."
A decade later, he was visiting his daughter in New York immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks and was overwhelmed by the event's psychological effects on the city.
When American soldiers started to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, however, Reich began to think that the real crisis for the country would come not from the fear of terrorist attacks but from the ''secondary trauma" brought back by troops who had fought in the war.
''What affects one affects all," Reich said.
Once the program is firmly established, his next goal is to go to Iraq himself. ''It's useful to see where 1 million people have gone and come back," he said.
