Marine Corps News, news from Iraq - Marine Corps Times

DoD: Hot line calls rise 40 percent every year

Rows of hot line operators with muted voices mask the desperation of incoming calls on a recent afternoon: a soldier back from Iraq with a drinking problem and a broken marriage; an Army recruiter in the throes of depression; a Marine in Iraq eager to reach his wife after the birth of his son.

This warren of cubicles in a suburban Philadelphia office building — with two other call centers in Arlington, Va., and St. Petersburg, Fla. — are the Pentagon’s front line for fighting the strain of war.

A few years ago, Military OneSource consultants found a temporary home for a 15-foot pet boa constrictor while its owner, an Army National Guard soldier, went to Iraq. In 2005, U.S. military doctors at a combat hospital in Iraq used the hot line to find a translator who could help treat, by telephone conference call, a wounded Nepalese soldier.

But the calls that send consultants to the “serenity room” here to chill out, or to take a walk around the building, are pleas for help from war-weary troops or their relatives.

“There’s a lot of stress [for] a lot of service members who are coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Amy DiMalanta, 34, who answers calls. “They’re having a lot of issues they’re facing at home like reintegration [with their family] or just the stress of, ‘Am I going to go back [to war]?’” she said. “A lot of them emphasize that they have a hard time sleeping ... having nightmares or they’re thinking that, ‘Oh, I’m still in Iraq,’ or ‘I’m thinking I’m going to hear a bomb go off.’”

The number of troops and their relatives seeking help from the hot line has grown 40 percent every year since 2004, Pentagon officials and hot line operators said.

The program’s growth is due to a greater need and greater awareness of the program and its hot line number, 1-800-342-9647, said Jane Burke, the program’s Pentagon supervisor.

“We’re trying to help them,” she said. “We know it’s hard.”

Pentagon officials declined to provide year-by-year statistics for Military OneSource. But Cherie Zadlo, a retired Air Force colonel who runs Military OneSource for Minneapolis-based Ceridian Corp., said there were more than 200,000 calls and 2.1 million Web visits last year.

The increase in help calls underscores concerns raised publicly by military leaders such as Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey Jr., that more and longer combat tours strain troops and their families.

Military OneSource began as a pilot program serving Marines in 2002 and was expanded to the entire military in 2004. It’s available to more than 5 million active, National Guard and reserve troops and their family members. From 2005 to 2007, it cost about $50 million per year, according to government contract records.

Denise Drzewiecki, 38, of Killeen, Texas, called while her husband, Army Sgt. Scott Drzewiecki, was in Iraq. Their daughter, then 12 and suffering mental disorders, was angrily acting out.

“I felt like my world was caving in on me,” Denise said. A hot line operator “validated how I was feeling and then told me what they could do to help.”

In two days, she had an appointment with a therapist.

Callers receive up to six free, confidential sessions with a licensed therapist within 30 miles of the caller’s location, Zadlo said.

Timothy Larsen, Marine Corps chief of family programs, calls OneSource “an invaluable tool.”

Once a week, there is a crisis call, often a threat of suicide, said Dan Lafferty, a licensed social worker and clinical supervisor here. Operators silently alert co-workers while keeping the service member on the line. Supervisors will listen in on the conversation. If necessary, authorities are contacted, Zadlo said.

“You ask them if they have a plan,” DiMalanta said. “[They say] ‘I just think I want to die. I don’t know what to do with myself. I’m desperate. I’m lost.’ And so you take it from there.”

A more common plea for help, however, is the call like the one from Army wife Angie Ayers, 36, of Lone Pier, Mich.

“They helped me deal with my teenage daughter’s anger over her dad being gone,” said Ayers, whose husband, Joe, deployed with the National Guard to Iraq in 2004-05.

Ayers’ daughter, Elizabeth, then 13, grew angrier with her dad’s absence: slamming doors, scrawling hate words on a photo of Osama bin Laden and dissolving into tears at news of a death in her father’s unit. OneSource found a family counselor for the Ayers family. Mother and daughter attended.

“[Elizabeth] was getting better, and I noticed,” Ayers said.

Services from OneSource’s hot line offered to military families include personal finance management, information on educational loans, spouse employment training and career management, and self-help groups that focus on drug and alcohol abuse, gambling addiction and eating disorders.

Serious medical or psychological problems are referred to military health care, Zadlo said. But stress or marital issues can be treated by in-person counseling with private-sector therapists under a promise that the military chain of command will not be notified, she said.

Pentagon surveys last year show that 71 percent of the wives of junior enlisted service members said loneliness is a serious problem during deployments. A program goal is to offer a voice on the phone for military families. There are also online chat rooms and workshops.

“We’re thinking that Military OneSource is sort of like a club you belong to,” Burke said. “We think it is the way of the future for the military to get connected [to troops and their families].”

DISCUSS: The benefits of OneSource