CARIBOU, Maine — For 40 years, Vet Centers across the country have offered counseling for veterans suffering from traumatic war-time experiences and helping them readjust to civilian life.
In honor of this milestone, all five Vet Centers in Maine, including one in Caribou, held an open house on June 13 — exactly 40 years after the centers were established by Congress and signed into law on June 13, 1979, as an acknowledgement that many Vietnam veterans were not accessing the same number of services as Korean or World War II veterans.
“What we do is provide hope,” said Caribou Vet Center Director Alexander Leger-Kelley. “We offer a number of different services: individual, family, and group counseling. The group services could be in psychosocial groups. For example we have Vietnam veteran groups and are trying to get people together to participate in an outing or group activity.”
Leger-Kelley said he was inspired to help as he has a great deal of family members who are veterans, and has a great deal of respect for this country’s military servicemen and women.
“For me, one of the most compelling things about working with veterans is honoring the service that they provided,” he said. “It’s something they’re very proud of, and I’m really proud to be able to help them once they come home. It’s a privilege to serve people who served their country.”
Leger-Kelley said the concept of PTSD was very new in 1979, and the Vet Center program began as a separate entity under the VA focused on caring for veterans who were dealing with mental health and readjustment issues.
He said that the VA and Vet Center work well together, adding that the Vet Center program specializes in working with veterans who have been deployed to combat areas and conducting psychosocial group activities, in addition to one-on-one hourlong counseling sessions.
“We focus more on groups and peer support,” he said. “If you’re in a group, then there are several veterans providing each other with peer support. Many veterans tend to isolate when they come home from deployment, and they’re really uncomfortable. Because once they’ve had combat experience, it can cause them to become hyper vigilant in civilian life.”
He added that while a “high percentage” of the clients who come through the Caribou Vet Center are men, there is a much smaller (albeit well represented) percentage of women who also need specialized services as well.
“I’ve been trying to see what we can do about getting a female counselor here,” he said. “It may make some people more comfortable. It might be hard for a woman who may have experienced military sexual trauma to come into an office where everybody who works there is male. They may feel a little uncomfortable.”
Any veterans interested in seeking assistance at the Caribou Vet Center can call the facility at 496-3900 or visit the official website at vetcenter.va.gov.
Leger-Kelley said that while he is proud of the 40-year milestone, there is “much more to the story.
“These guys,” he said, referring to the 50 to 60 veterans he personally works with and the roughly 100 veterans who receive services at the facility, “there’s a whole story behind everybody that we see here.”
