Fly Fishing Program Turns Hurting Into Healing

The serenity of flyfishing, along with the fine motor skills involved in the sport, provide the therapeutic groundwork of Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing, which is dedicated to the physical and emotional rehabilitation of disabled active military service personnel and disabled veterans.

Sgt. Isaac Sims returned to Kansas City a troubled young man, physically sound but mentally ravaged by memories of the war in Iraq. On a Sunday in May 2014 he began firing rifle shots inside and outside his home on Kansas City’s east side and, following a five-hour standoff, emerged to fire at police. After surviving two tours in Iraq, Sims, 26, was killed in his own front yard.

Another Kansas Citian, Tomas Young, enlisted in the U.S. Army two days after the 9/11 Attacks, hoping, he said, to “exact some form of retribution” and also to earn money for college. Five days after being deployed in Iraq in April 2004, Young was paralyzed from the chest down when a bullet severed his spine during a rebel ambush in Sadr City. Bitter and disillusioned, Young spent his final years in and out of hospitals and hospice care, contemplating suicide and raging against the treatment of veterans. He died Nov. 10, 2014.

Stories like Sims’s and Young’s have a lot to do with my involvement in Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing. I’m not a big fan of war, but it doesn’t matter how I feel about the Afghanistan campaign – that’s mostly politics; this is about people. I remember when many blamed returning soldiers for the Vietnam War, forgetting that soldiers don’t have the luxury of choosing which orders they follow. Public sentiment is more understanding these days – soldiers return home to a country that wants to help them, but we don’t always know how. Budget cuts and a lack of programs add to the problem. The result is that rates among Veterans are double the national averages for depression, homelessness and suicide.

Here are some of the staggering numbers:

·         Unemployment: The unemployment rate in the United States is 4.3%. The unemployment rate for veterans is now down to the national average, but it had been as high as 12.1% in 2011. So things are improving on this front, although underemployment remains an issue.

·         Depression: The National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) estimate that between 11.5-14% of Americans suffer from depression. The Veterans Administration estimates the rate for veterans is at least 20%.

·         Homelessness: One of every 12 Americans is a veteran. One of every 6 homeless Americans is a veteran.

·         Suicide: The suicide rate among all Americans is 8.9 per 100,000. The suicide rate for veterans is between 18.7 and 20.8 per 100,000, or 22 per day according to one study.

Clearly, we need to do a better job of taking care of the people who take care of America.

A bit of history: The Veterans Administration began, in essence, before the United States was born. When the Continental Army recruited soldiers prior to the Revolutionary War, it offered pensions to anyone who would join. Four score and nine years later, following the Civil War, soldiers had to report in person to Washington, DC, to collect their benefits. They would show up at the Office of Veterans Affairs, give their names and home states, and then the clerks would search through thousands of records that were bound with … wait for it … red tape. So the VA is not only part of our governmental bureaucracy, it is the source of bureaucracy’s defining metaphor.

That problem has continued – VA hospitals were ill-prepared for the numbers of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Sims, for example, was on a waiting list and, at the time of his death, was 30 days away from a bed at Kansas City’s VA Medical Center. The wait in other centers can exceed a year. Sims’s condition, what had for generations been known simply as “shell shock,” now has a name – Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD – and a treatment regimen. But there are, and perhaps always will always be, gaps in treatment as therapists work to catch up with medical advances that now save the lives of soldiers like Young whose injuries, until recently, would have been fatal.

Fly fishing can fill some of those gaps, because of the fine motor skills involved in tying flies and knots, and casting a fly rod, in addition to the serenity of the sport itself. That thought occurred to Ed Nicholson, a retired US Navy Captain, who developed and founded Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in 2005. There are now more than 200 programs working in association with VA hospitals and medical centers. Their mission statement is, “Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing, Inc., is dedicated to the physical and emotional rehabilitation of disabled active military service personnel and disabled veterans through fly fishing and associated activities including education and outings.”

From a psychological perspective, it probably comes as no surprise that a trip to a VA Hospital is not necessarily the high point of a Veteran’s day. That said, however, those appointments give Veterans a reason to get up in the morning and get out of the house, something that they might not otherwise be inclined to do.

PHWFF, on the other hand, gives disabled veterans and injured active servicemen and servicewomen an informal way to augment their therapy. The results are tangible – from tying a fly to catching a fish. Moreover, the therapy comes in a non-threatening social environment where they can interact with fellow Vets and others at their own comfort level. Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing works as an adjunct to, rather than a substitute for, physical therapy programs at VA Hospitals. The idea is to give the participants a positive focus through activities that appeal to them. As one of the participants in Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing – Greater Kansas City says, “Up and out! Up off the couch and out the door!”

PHWFF is much more than a “Vet’s day out” program. Yes, the program involves fishing trips and fly tying classes which are therapeutic in their own right. But the physical therapy of tying a fly or casting a fly rod supplement the physical therapy programs of the VA. Participants have said that learning to tie a fly with a prosthetic hand helped them learn to tie their shoes and to dress themselves. The interactions with program volunteers and participants help those with the socialization issues at the core of PTSD.

Participants tell us it’s working. Veterans in the Greater Kansas City Program look forward to our twice-a-month fly tying sessions, and about 20 are regular participants. Their spouses, too, notice an improved disposition after a meeting or a fishing trip. Their engagement in the program has spawned a support network of its own – a participant may be having a bad day, and will call another and say, “Let’s go fishing,” or “Let’s get together and tie some flies.”

Our next step is growth, partnering with other Veterans programs to connect those in need with available resources, from housing to job fairs. By working with other Veterans organizations, we hope to expand our outreach, and theirs, so that we can turn the hurting into healing.