My name is Dr. Amy Street,
and I'm an investigator
at the Women's Health Sciences Division of the National Center for PTSD,
which is at the VA Boston Healthcare System.
I'm also an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry
at Boston University School of Medicine.
I work mostly with Veterans who've experienced military sexual trauma.
So these are Veterans, men and women, who experienced sexual harassment
or sexual assault during their military service.
One of the things that I think is important is to help providers in the VA
figure out how to most effectively help these Veterans.
VA has instituted a system where every Veteran
is asked about experiences of military sexual trauma.
There are several important reasons why that happens.
One is, we need to know how many Veterans
have been impacted by these experiences.
Another reason is, Veterans who've experienced military sexual trauma
are more likely to have mental health conditions
or physical health conditions which are associated with those experiences,
and it's important for medical providers to know about those things
so they can provide the best care for Veterans.
Another reason why it's important for us to know which Veterans
have experienced military sexual trauma
is because those Veterans are entitled to free care
for any conditions associated with military sexual trauma.
But if we don't know that they've had that experience,
we can't offer them that care.
So, it's pretty important that providers and Veterans
can have honest and open conversations
about these kinds of experiences in Veteran's past.
Unfortunately if you're a Veteran
who has experienced military sexual trauma,
it can be a very difficult thing to talk about,
and it can be particularly difficult
if you don't trust the provider who you're working with.
So I'm working on a study now, that asks Veterans
who have recently talked to a medical provider
about experiences of military sexual trauma,
about how that experience went.
I asked them if they were satisfied with the experience,
what they liked about the experience,
what they didn't like about the experience,
what they would change, and how they thought other Veterans
would want to be treated in that same encounter.
One of the things that we learned was that women Veterans
were pretty comfortable in talking about these experiences.
We saw a lot more variability among men who had experienced sexual trauma.
As I'd said earlier,
these are incredibly difficult experiences to talk about,
and I think that they can be particularly difficult
for men to talk about.
But one of the take-home messages from the study
is that we need to particularly focus on educating providers
who are working with male survivors of sexual trauma.
Medical providers want to help these Veterans.
They want to provide the best care for them that they can,
but they may not know how to do that,
so I can take the information that Veterans have shared with me,
and go back to providers and say,
"These are the things Veterans like about these conversations.
These are that things that Veterans don't like about these conversations,"
and then the providers can adapt their own practices,
so that they're providing better care for all the Veterans who they see.
I work really closely with Dr. Susan McCutcheon,
she's the National Director for VA of Military Sexual Trauma,
Women's Mental Health, and Family Services,
and that's been a really valuable part of my research.
I'm really passionate about helping Veterans
who've experienced military sexual trauma,
and Dr. Susan McCutcheon is equally passionate about that same subject,
but on the operations side of the house.
And she and I work really effectively together,
because I think we realize both of our work is really important
if we want to make real change for these Veterans.
And so it's been fantastic to be able to work together on these issues
that matter so much.
Working with Veterans is an incredibly meaningful part of the work that I do.
Research can be really hard, it's tedious at times, it's long,
it doesn't always pay off right away, and because of that,
you need to have something
about the work that you're doing that keeps you going day after day
and gets you out of bed in the morning,
and into the office and working hard,
and for me, that's working with Veterans.
Often in my research studies, there's a small monetary compensation
just to thank Veterans for the time that they've put into helping me do this work,
or for the transportation cost
to get into the hospital for the appointment.
But time after time after time, Veterans say to me,
"You know I'm not doing this for the $25?
I'm doing this because I want to help other Veterans."
So they have a real sense of service to each other
and wanting to help the next man or the next woman
who comes along and make their experiences better.
Honestly, there is no way we could do the work that we do
without the input of Veterans,
and it's never stopped surprising me how giving Veterans are,
how much they want to give back.
We just couldn't do this work without them
and that the fact that they are willing to give back
is what makes it all so possible.