How We Do It: Promoting Resilience, Recovery and Reintegration

DCoE assesses, validates, oversees and facilitates prevention, resilience, identification, treatment, outreach, rehabilitation, and reintegration programs for psychological health (PH) and traumatic brain injury (TBI) to ensure the Department of Defense meets the needs of the nation’s military communities, warriors and families.

Building a Culture of Resilience

One of DCoE’s goals is to help service members and families build resilience, which is a set of actions and attitudes that prepare individuals and groups for adapting to challenging situations; establishing a “new normal;” and realizing one’s potential for growth.

DCoE oversees a resource center that supports resilience by connecting service members, veterans, their families, health care providers and others with information and resources about PH and TBI. The DCoE Outreach Center, established in January 2009, is staffed by health consultants and nurses with background expertise in PH and TBI.

DCoE Resilience Continuum

To assist leaders with the development of effective resilience and combat operational stress control programs within their units, DCoE developed the Resilience Continuum. This model moves away from the medical/illness-based model to a leader-driven psychological health, resilience and performance philosophy that addresses all aspects of military readiness and operations.

Facilitating Recovery

DCoE supports the Department of Defense and other organizations in their efforts to produce and update evidence-based clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) to improve the treatment of warriors and their families. CPGs can improve the quality of clinical decisions and facilitate the recovery of wounded warriors dealing with both seen and unseen injuries. Visit the For Health Professionals > Resources page to locate CPGs for training wounded warriors dealing with a TBI or with PH concerns such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Supporting Reintegration

Earlier this year, DCoE launched the Real Warriors Campaign, a multimedia public education effort designed to combat the stigma associated with seeking psychological health care and treatment and encourage service members, veterans and their families to use the resources available to them. While the campaign also supports resilience and recovery, specific information and resources to help active duty, National Guard and Reserve members and families reintegrate following deployment are available through the campaign’s Web site.