Southern Miss Gulf Coast | Faculty | Ray Scurfield | Synopsis

SYNOPSIS: A Vietnam Trilogy by Raymond Monsour Scurfield
(Algora Publishing, 2004)

One of the few books ever written by a social worker about war and its psychological and social impact, Dr. Scurfield offers a unique window into the world of war, its short and longer-term impact on combatants, and creative mental health interventions. Dr. Scurfield was a social work officer on an Army psychiatric team in Vietnam followed by a 25-year career in regional and national leadership mental health positions with the Department of Veterans Affairs. He uses a phenomenological approach to present the pathos and courage of many combat veterans as illustrated through their stories and vignettes and his commentary from the perspective of being a Vietnam veteran, a social worker and a director of several PTSD programs:
• A critique of how military mental health and social work actually operate in a war-zone, both the good and the bad, and the trade-offs on focusing on acute recovery
• What military personnel do to survive war and the acute and longer-term impact
• The moral, religious and social conflicts engendered by war
• An insider’s account of the Vietnam veterans movement, VA Headquarters and the VA Vet Center Program and related national politics in the 1970s and 1980s
• Key developments in the field of PTSD starting with the Vietnam War and DSM-II
• Veterans’ experiences in creative therapeutic events and activities such as during the very emotional dedication in 1982 of the National Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, and in creative action-based treatment innovations such helicopter ride therapy, adventure-based Outward Bound rafting and rappelling with disabled veterans, and American Indian healing rituals as a complement to traditional PTSD treatment.
• Veterans’ experiences in an unprecedented in-vivo intervention in1989 in which Dr. Scurfield co-led the first therapy group of veterans with PTSD on a very controversial and profoundly emotional return to Vietnam. This pioneering effort dramatically expanded the healing opportunities for combat veterans through cultural experiences and returning to former battlefields. The eight veterans’ conflicts internally and with each other, their discoveries, their pain and their triumphs are told through daily journal-based entries, as sis a critique of the pros and cons of veterans with war-related PTSD returning to Vietnam.
• A thought-provoking commentary on why it is inevitable that many war veterans will continue to have decades-long issues related to their war experiences, which has a fundamental impact on understanding, treating and healing strategies to recover from war.

A Vietnam Trilogy will be followed by Dr. Scurfield’s forthcoming (2005) book. From Vietnam to 9/11 to Iraq. War, Veterans and Post-Traumatic Stress describes the impact of the Persian Gulf War, traumas experienced by wounded medical casualties being evacuated from the war-zone, emotional meetings between Vietnam and Soviet Afghantsi veterans, racism and dehumanization of the enemy, and the political and societal collusion of sanitization and silence about the real impact of war. Then, journal-based entries bring readers along on a unique award-winning Vietnam History Study Abroad course in 2000 co-led by Dr. Scurfield that combined history, social work and psychology for 16 history students and three combat veterans. There is a critique of compelling positive and cautionary aspects of veterans returning to Vietnam, and articulation of an innovative expanded circle of healing to further recovery. Also described are parallels and interconnections about trauma exposure, survival and recovery in the Vietnam War, 9/11 and the Iraq War, concerns and recommendations regarding Iraq-related psychiatric casualties, military mental health in Iraq, an innovative cognitive-reframing treatment protocol and the whole truth that veterans, families and our society have the right to know about the full human cost of war.