Daily Excerpt: Heart to Heart Resuscitation (Montgomery) - Introduction
Excerpt from Heart to Heart Resuscitation: My Journal by Victor Montgomery III --
Introduction
My memoirs give straightforward, down-to-earth advice about
encouragement and hope. While revitalizing the therapeutic approach used to
overcome the combat veterans’ immediate life-threatening darkness of depression
and suicidal thoughts, I define my unique tried-and-true method of crisis
intervention as a matter of “heart-to-heart resuscitation”, as I call it. The
window of opportunity to make a difference for you or someone close to you can
literally be a matter of seconds, whether over a telephone or face-to-face
your, your loved ones or your friend’s life may hang in the balance. The
process of heart-to-heart communicating is one I suggest and utilize. I believe
through encouraging, motivating and mentoring, suffering veterans can be helped
to find the strength, self-determination, and support to get help and out of
danger. My number one priority is to get veterans to safety.
I say to them and to you, “Oh yes, you do have a reason to
live and enjoy life and I will tell you why!”
Veterans of Vietnam and the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars are
today living on city streets, in cars and in the nation’s homeless shelters.
Some are so desperate they commit crimes and are going to prison. Many
struggling vets or family and friends in the neighborhood finally end up
calling hospital emergency rooms, psychiatric nurses, 911, 211 or the VA
hotline for help and advice. Many are reluctant to contact anyone. Account
after account report veterans locking themselves in their bedrooms, some barricading
themselves in their rooms, not coming out for days at a time. When they do
reach out for help to a hotline or emergency department, they explain, “Asking
for help is like saying I’ve failed my mission." Most of us cannot bring
ourselves to ask for help. If you or someone close to you is feeling depressed
and has thoughts about harming yourself or others, it’s important that you
recognize that feeling this way is a serious but treatable condition.
Depression is a treatable disorder as well. Certain signs and symptoms, of
which I’ll later get into, will tell you that you need to ask for help. Seeking
help is not a sign of weakness or something to be ashamed of; it is your right
to seek help “It takes the courage and strength of a warrior to ask for help”
states a popular VA poster slogan. Your military buddies will be proud of your
showing the courage to face the obstacles in your life.
Why should you care?
What are you going to do about it?
How can you make a difference?
When veterans call a clinic expressing symptoms of
depressive illnesses that interfere with their everyday life functioning, they
are made aware that professional medical treatment teams will be needed and
should be sought. A call for help is highly recommended if you or someone you
care about has thoughts of or mentions a plan or intent to harm him or herself.
Even if there is no suicide ideation, you or a vet close to you may be
experiencing a “crisis” of a different nature: unrelenting psychological (mental)
and physiological (body) pain, the feelings of helplessness and hopelessness,
substance abuse or other addictions, feeling out-of-control or in need of anger
management. If you feel trapped and see no way to escape, these are very good
reasons to call or come in for help. Mental health clinicians around the
country are seeing significant substance abuse cases, particularly alcohol
dependency, among veterans.
Did you know? Some veterans exposed to trauma and
negative experiences in the war zones are using alcohol and other drugs at a
high rate to “self-medicate.” After coming home, they seldom report, at least
at the beginning, any mental health problems. Often it is not until several
months to several years after veterans settle into their lives at home and work
that delayed symptoms of anxiety, panic, rage, anger, depression and trouble
sleeping begin to appear or become recurrent and repetitive in their daily
routines. Increasing alcohol intake and the taking of other illicit street
drugs, such as marijuana, opiates, cocaine, methamphetamines, and pain killers
often become daily scourges. Domestic violence, marital and family disputes are
other ways veterans show their pain and depression. Marriages are in jeopardy,
jobs are lost or never found, financial difficulties surface and children begin
to fear for their safety in their own homes. An increasing number of veterans
come home from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan already diagnosed with
post-traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injury (TBI).
If you find yourself or someone close to you increasingly
depressed and despondent after months and even years of experiencing tours of
nighttime firefights, picking up enemy bodies, finding baby toys and articles
of children’s clothing on the floors of suspected terrorists’ houses, you are
not alone. The number of combat veterans taking antidepressants daily to
control and ease the effects of lengthy and repeated tours is rapidly
increasing. Heart to Heart Resuscitation has important information for you or
someone you care about to identify recognizable signs and symptoms that may
increase risk, veteran-specific risk factors.
What are the answers?
In this book I will try to answer difficult questions for you about what
is happening to you or someone close to you, our veterans, and why so many are
dying by their own hands. I will introduce you to the psychological wounds of
war, use some terms that may be unfamiliar, high-risk signs for suicide, and
put in plain words with careful description how to recognize what defines a
veteran’s need for counseling, what signs to look for and what to do when you
discover them.
In the following chapters you also will find real stories of
raw emotion, expressed by men and women veterans, family members and friends
and callers pleading for help before it is too late. I will move you through
the poignant, uncensored personal stories shared to me by desperate veterans
coming into Group Room #2 at the clinic, representing many war and conflict
experiences from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Some have already hurt themselves and need
immediate emergency rescue while others are confused and cannot find their way
in life. And some just want someone to listen.
Most importantly …I will try to point out the steps and
strategies in each veteran's story, that will help you recover and heal. Then I
will do my utmost, drawing on my long experience with other veterans, to guide
you on a path that will lead you and your loved ones from the darkness and
anguish of pain and suffering to growth and resuscitation. I know our journey
together calls for strength and courage, but I also know you have both. You or
your loved one is a genuine American hero.
LITERARY TITAN GOLD AWARD
Read more posts about Victor and his books HERE.
Watch the book trailer HERE.
View author's website HERE.
use code FF25 at MSI Press webstore.
Want to buy this book and not have to pay for it?
Ask your local library to purchase and shelve it.
 |
Follow MSI Press on Twitter, Face Book, and Instagram.
Interested in publishing with MSI Press LLC?
Check out information on how to submit a proposal.
Planning on self-publishing and don't know where to start? Our author au pair services will mentor you through the process.
Want an author-signed copy of this book? Purchase the book at 25% discount (use coupon code FF25) and concurrently send a written request to orders@msipress.com.
Julia Aziz, signing her book, Lessons of Labor, at an event at Book People in Austin, Texas.
Want to communicate with one of our authors? You can! Find their contact information on our Authors' Pages.
Check out our rankings -- and more -- HERE.
Comments
Post a Comment