Can Meditation Bolster Mental Health in Soldiers and Veterans?

A couple of weeks ago, I was in San Antonio to do resilience training with Army hospital professionals. My job was to demonstrate why guided imagery audios were an effective, portable, user-friendly, idiot-proof tool for managing stress and preventing burnout for health providers, wounded warriors and veterans alike.

It was an impressive group of health care professionals we were training. Some had backgrounds straight out of health and mental health, while others came from the combat side -- former special ops, rangers, snipers, bomb dismantlers and so on. Some straddled both worlds. They came from as far away as Korea and Germany, and as close by as Fort Sam Houston, and every place in between. They'd seen a lot of seriously nasty stuff.

I picked their excellent brains during breaks. I wanted to know what they thought about helping active troops learn self-calming and relaxation skills.

Months ago we'd begun sending thousands of guided imagery audios for stress and insomnia to our service people in Iraq and Afghanistan, pre-loaded onto these durable, portable little MP3 players called Playaways that the soldiers really like. The hope was that by teaching them to self-regulate their mood and biochemistry, they'd be less prone to acquiring posttraumatic stress; as well as gain new skills for dealing with depression, grief, guilt, self-doubt, irritation, boredom, loneliness and all the rest. (MORE)

Source Huffington Post