Preface

Today there is a large and growing population of veterans and active duty military personnel with some unique psychotherapeutic needs. They range from those who are still in their teens to some of their great grandparents who served in World War II and Korea. They are men and women from every sector of society, and they come to us to help them cope with issues such as building new lives with physical disabilities more extensive than ever before, because medicine has advanced so far that doctors can save the lives of Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen who would have died of their wounds in any previous era. Other issues involve their families and the strains of having one and sometimes both parents going overseas multiple times. At the same time, there aren't nearly enough treatment resources to meet the need as well as we wish we could.

The use of therapeutic homework assignments to augment face-to-face sessions with a therapist, social worker, psychologist, or psychiatrist offers great advantages. It serves as a “force multiplier” enabling the clinician to engage the veteran or service member with whom he or she is working in the therapy process every day, rather than only on days they can meet. This allows each professional to help several times as many clients as would be possible if all the work were being done in session. It keeps the therapeutic process in the forefront of the lives of veterans and service members both by engaging their attention and energy daily and potentially in all spheres of their lives. They are able to take the work of therapy into the arenas in life that challenge them, practice what they're learning on the spot, and process the lessons learned when they meet with their clinicians. They are also able to involve their families in their therapy more easily, as they do the homework on their schedule, at the place that works for them.

The homework assignments are provided online as well as printed in the Planner, enabling clinicians to modify them, tailoring each assignment to the situation, coping resources, stages of readiness and insight, and other specifics of each client. They are uniformly cognitive-behavioral in structure, the approach research shows is most effective for psychotherapy in general, with many also containing strong elements of solution-focused brief therapy.

As with other Homework Planners in the Wiley PracticePlanners series, the assignments are closely integrated with the corresponding Treatment Planner, Progress Notes Planner, and TheraScribe module, being built on the same problem areas. This Homework Planner contains 78 homework assignments covering 38 problem areas, with a Therapist's Overview for each assignment. In many cases the Overviews also offer videotherapy recommendations tapping into another Wiley resource, Rent Two Films and Let's Talk in the Morning, 2nd ed., by John W. Hesley and Jan G. Hesley.

A final note: Both of us are not only clinicians, we are veterans. We've based a lot of this book on our own experiences on active duty in the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. We have done our best to produce a work that would do as much good for our brothers and sisters in arms as we possibly could. If you have suggestions for ways we can make it better, please contact us via John Wiley & Sons, Inc. We appreciate all the feedback we can get.

About the Authors

James R. Finley, MA, LMHC, is a psychotherapist with experience as a therapist, clinical supervisor, and program manager in a variety of military, community, and correctional settings—outpatient and inpatient. He is the author of Integrating the 12 Steps into Addiction Therapy and coauthor with Brenda S. Lenz of The Addiction Counselor's Documentation Sourcebook, 2nd ed. and The Addiction Treatment Homework Planner, 4th Edition, also published by John Wiley & Sons. He is a retired Marine and disabled veteran.

Bret A. Moore, PsyD, ABPP, is a clinical psychologist in San Antonio, Texas. In 2008, he left active duty service in the U.S. Army, where he served as a captain and a clinical psychologist with the 85th Combat Stress Control (CSC) unit based in Fort Hood, Texas. He has extensive experience treating veterans, including two tours of duty in Iraq as an Officer in Charge of Preventive Services and Officer in Charge of Clinical Operations. He is coauthor of The Veterans and Active Duty Military Psychotherapy Treatment Planner and Wheels Down: Adjusting to Life after Deployment. He is coeditor of Living and Surviving in Harm's Way: A Psychological Treatment Handbook for Pre- and Post-Deployment of Military Personnel and Pharmacotherapy for Psychologists: Prescribing and Collaborative Roles. He also writes a bi-weekly column for Military Times titled Kevlar for the Mind, which deals with mental health issues specific to veterans and service members.