2022 Tillman Scholar: Tim Spalla
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The Wounded Healer Project
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Veterans are not broken,
they have been broken open.
Military experience reveals an innate ability to meet suffering from a place of empathy, courage, and willingness to come alongside those who are struggling.
The Wounded Healer Project highlights the value of veteran’s military experiences in the mental health world and encourages, enables and empowers veterans to become mental health providers.
Veterans are not broken,
they have been broken open.
Military experience reveals an innate ability to meet suffering from a place of empathy, courage, and willingness to come alongside those who are struggling.
The Wounded Healer Project highlights the value of veteran’s military experiences in the mental health world and encourages, enables and empowers veterans to become mental health providers.
Veterans | Mental Health | Community | Service
Veteran mental health providers serving veterans in need.
The Wounded Healer Project’s primary mission is connecting military veteran-mental health providers with members of the veteran community who may be struggling in isolation with addiction, poverty, incarceration, homelessness, unemployment and terminal illness. We believe early and culturally competent, mental health intervention is the key to saving veterans from the risk of suicide. Many veterans are experiencing unaddressed mental health issues related to their time in service (i.e. combat, sexual trauma, addiction, shame and isolation) and may have distrust in the law enforcement, judicial, and healthcare systems. The Wounded Healer Project team of military veteran-counselors views these challenges as opportunities to meet our fellow veterans from a place of empathy, courage and understanding in order to bring them back into the community and help enact lasting change in their lives. We believe no veteran should be left behind.
COMMON BARRIERS TO MENTAL HEALTH CARE FOR VETERANS:
- Stigma surrounding mental health care diagnoses or seeking care
- Lack of trust in non-military mental health providers
- Distrust in the VA health care system as a whole
- Lack of access to care based on military discharge categorization
- Lack of understanding or misunderstanding veteran benefits
- Fear of losing or being denied security clearances
- Being unsure of how to speak about classified experiences related to trauma
Cheney, Koenig, Miller, et al. (2018).
DID YOU KNOW?
0
lived in poverty in 2021
0
are in enrolled in VA care
The rate of death by suicide was
47.8 per 100,000 veterans
following military separation in 2019
0
with PTSD do not receive treatment
American Addiction Centers, 2022
Justice For Vets, 2023
National Veteran Suicide Prevention Annual Report, 2022
Why Veteran Mental Health Providers?
The military is a melting pot of people from all backgrounds who go on to be stationed all around the globe, giving them a distinct multicultural experience of the world. Many veterans have also deployed and witnessed the trauma of war that most will never know or fully comprehend. These experiences offer a unique gift to the field of mental health counseling: the capacity to fearlessly face what may be the darkest parts of human existence and still be able to complete the mission.
Paired with a counselor’s heart, our Veteran Mental Health Providers are not only able to complete the mission, but they do so with an especially deep sense of empathy, understanding, and positive regard for all those who may be suffering. Our Veteran Mental Health Providers don’t shy away from the experiences that make life challenging – they’ll walk into the battle side-by-side with you.
Who we help.
- Veterans seeking to become mental health providers
- Veterans who are isolated, suffering and in need of mental health care
- Organizations in need of mental health support for their veteran clients
- Justice-involved veterans
- Veterans with terminal illness
- Veterans experiencing homelessness
- Military Service Members in career transition
- & More
We know what it takes to heal & we’ll leave no veteran behind.
Veteran Mental Health Providers
The Wounded Healer Project helps veterans reconnect to their sense of service by empowering them to transcend and transform their military experience and training into a career in mental health care. We care for our veteran mental health providers by ensuring that they are also not left behind and are given opportunities to tend to their own healing and wellness. We are committed to:
- Providing mentorship for veterans who are interested in becoming mental health providers.
- Connecting and supporting our veteran mental health providers through virtual community, social media, seminars, conferences and more.
- Coordinating retreats designed intentionally for veteran mental health providers to continue their personal growth and healing.
- Advocating for higher compensation and a balanced caseload to help mitigate burnout.
- Providing coaching and encouraging our veteran mental health providers to build their own private practices that help serve the needs of their individual communities.
Veterans in Need
Our founders are not just counselors, they are veterans themselves who know firsthand what it’s like to struggle with mental health. In the course of their own healing, they found that the biggest impact came from when another veteran met them in their suffering and reminded them that they were not alone in it and did not have to heal alone either. From these moments of vulnerability and healing, The Wounded Healer Project has made a promise to:
- Go back into our military communities to find our fellow veterans who are isolated and suffering to prevent losing our brothers and sisters to suicide.
- Serve the veterans who may be overlooked due to their discharge categorization, justice involvement, terminal illness, homelessness, unemployment, or other challenges.
- Reduce as many barriers to mental health care as possible by partnering with other agencies and offering all of our services at no cost to the veteran.
- Offer individual and group therapy services that are evidence-based, holistic, emerging/alternative, trauma-informed care.
Donors
The Wounded Healer Project seeks community and donor support in order to provide critical therapeutic services for our veteran mental health providers and the marginalized veterans we serve. Your generous support and donations will help us build a foundation that ensures our mission is executed with the highest standards of integrity and compliance for generations to come. We are humbled and grateful for your belief in our mission and are investing the donations we receive in the following ways:
- Program development and support
- Program evaluation and quality assurance
- Legal and accounting services
- Funding wellness retreats for our veteran mental health providers
- Mental health training and continuing education for our providers
- Community events and workshops
- Transportation, insurance, and equipment costs
- Marketing, advertising, and social media management
- Veteran mental health provider and Administrative staff salaries
Our Latest News
June 2022 Vaudeville Variety Show Benefit
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The Wounded Healer Project
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June 2022 Vaudeville Variety Show Benefit
2021 The F. Leonard Pomponio and Elizabeth M. Adams Award recipient, Tegan Rowley
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The Wounded Healer Project
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2021 The F. Leonard Pomponio and Elizabeth M. Adams Award recipient, Tegan Rowley
FAQs
01 | I work at an agency that needs mental health care assistance for our veteran clients, how can WHP help?
We can contract with your agency to provide short-term or long-term individual or group therapy services in person or via telehealth depending on our mutual contract. We can also provide trainings, workshops, or work with your agency to create mental health services that make sense for the veterans you serve.
02 | How can I get involved?
We’re humbled that you want to be involved in our organization! There are many ways to be involved such as by donating, working as a contracted veteran mental health counselor, helping us identify needs in the community or becoming a WHP Community Advocate.
03 | What’s involved in being a WHP Community Advocate?
Our Community Advocates are the volunteers of our organization who help us fulfill our mission by spreading the word about our efforts, making connections in the community on our behalf, helping us organize and staff events and fundraisers, or collaborating with us on ways to utilize their specific skills or interests.
04 | I’m not a veteran nor a mental health counselor, can I still be involved?
Yes! Our Community Advocate program is for anyone who believes in what we are doing and wants to help.
05 | I’m not a veteran, but I am a counselor or counselor in training, how can I be involved?
We thank you and honor the great healing work you do and are open to hearing your ideas about how we may be able to partner. At this time, we prioritize mental health providers who are veterans themselves as the specific treatment providers for our programs. If you are interested in offering training, consultation or supervision to our providers, we would love to hear from you! You are always welcome to become a Community Advocate if you would still like to be involved in our organization.
06 | I’m a veteran and I’m interested in becoming a mental health counselor. What’s next?
We’re excited to hear you want to take this journey! Please send us an email and we can meet with you to provide mentorship and camaraderie during this process. We can help you understand what your next steps are as far as applying for school, completing coursework, helping to find internship sites, understanding the path to licensure, and answer whatever questions that may come up on the way.
07 | I’m a veteran and I’m already a mental health counselor, can I help?
We would love to have you on the team! Please send us an email with your name, license type, license number, and clinical specialty if applicable. We are currently only contracting with veteran mental health counselors in Colorado but hope to expand one day!
05 | What is WHP’s biggest need right now?
At this stage, our biggest need is funding and getting the word out about our mission. We are a brand new organization that relies on generous donations to keep The WHP moving forward so we can continue serving veterans in need.