Fighting Trauma The Military Way

Don’t let distress sideline you. Turn it into a strength instead.

- Michaela Haas

WHEN ARMY SURGEON Rhonda Cornum regained consciousness after her helicopter crashed, she looked up to see five Iraqi soldiers pointing rifles at her. It was 1991, and her Black Hawk had been shot down over the Iraqi desert. Dazed from blood loss, with a busted knee, two broken arms, and a bullet in her shoulder, the then-36-year-old medic was subjected to a mock execution by her captors, sexually assaulted, and held prisoner for a week.

Her crisis included textbook causes for post-traumatic stress: a near-death experience, sexual assault, utter helplessness. And yet, after her release and medical rehabilitation, she surprised psychiatrists by focusing on ways she’d improved. “I became a better doctor, a better parent, a better commander, probably a better person,” she says.

Cornum’s experience is far from unique. The term post-traumatic growth, coined by psychologists Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, describes the surprising benefits many survivors discover in the process of healing from a traumatic event. After counseling cancer survivors, the bereaved, the severely injured, veterans, and prisoners, the researchers found growth in five main areas: personal strength, relationships with others, perspective on life, appreciation of life, and spirituality.