September 5, 2004 in Idaho

Doctor helps soldiers deal with emotion

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TWIN FALLS, Idaho – For many soldiers in Iraq, there are some things even more stressful than enemy fire.

Like being in a strange land thousands of miles away from their loved ones.

Or looking forward to getting on the plane back home again only to be told two weeks before they’re scheduled to leave that their tour of duty has been extended.

“Uncertainty really adds greatly to stress,” said local physician Dr. Rick Yavruian. “It’s unfortunate.”

Yavruian, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Canyon View Psychiatric and Addiction Services, is a Reservist with the Army’s 785th Medical Company Combat Stress Control Unit out of Utah.

He headed over to northern Iraq last January for a four-month tour of duty, with assignments at bases in Mosul and Tall Afar in northern Iraq.

Yavruian said he was surprised at how many soldiers were on anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medications even before being deployed to Iraq. Part of his job was to monitor soldiers’ health to make sure they were on the correct medications and dosage.

Yavruian remembered debriefing soldiers in one unit after one of their battle buddies committed suicide in the latrine. He said soldiers react in different ways to such a crisis.

“Some people go into shock,” he said. “But some experience a lot of anger. They think, ‘How could you do this to yourself?’ and ‘How could you leave me?’ ”

He said people thrown into crisis situations often find they’re much stronger than they think they are.

“Humans seem to be pretty resilient,” Yavruian said. “People are often surprised at what their own abilities are.”

Soldiers in a combat situation certainly experience stress, but the key is to intervene as early as possible to keep it from becoming overwhelming.

“The mission is to be so far upstream that you treat someone before they’re bad enough to have to send home,” Yavruian said.

That means talking with groups of soldiers about the different ways people deal with crisis situations.

He said most soldiers can handle the combat and the poor living conditions. But what they have a really difficult time dealing with is finding out a spouse is cheating or that a child is sick.

He said one thing that keeps soldiers going is communication with people back home, be it by phone or letter or e-mail. He remembered visiting a tiny base on a mountaintop. A satellite phone was the soldiers’ lifeline.

Yavruian said it’s often difficult for soldiers to ask for help. They feel they have to maintain the macho image. “You never saw John Wayne visiting a psychiatrist,” he said.

Still, he was awed by the dedication that leaders felt toward their units. He remembered how the captain of an infantry group, a man with a tough reputation, told Yavruian he needed help to deal with the loss of one of his soldiers. But he wasn’t doing it for him, he was doing it for the sake of his troops.

“I was just inspired,” Yavruian said. “It was such a privilege to meet such selfless leaders who wanted to do the best for their men.”

Another thing Yavruian said he learned in Iraq was how much culture affects a nation’s ability to have a democracy.

“The striking thing I came back with is you can’t give people democracy,” Yavruian said. “They have to want it.”

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