Treatment Support
It is important to begin a discussion of our approach to supporting our military veterans by stating the following:

• Neither American Heroes Return (AHR), Camp Hero, nor Place of Solace provide therapeutic services. We exist and grow to serve military veterans, their families, and other organizations in a manner that supports the military transitional process and wounded warrior recovery.
   
• No service that AHR provides is intended to conflict with, work against, undermine, nor diminish the work of the Veteran's Administration or other governmental agencies and organizations who are tasked with supporting active duty, reserve, and military veterans.
   
• AHR has tasked itself with being a leader in promoting cutting edge, out-of-the-box solutions to supporting the military transition, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) recovery, traumatic brain injury (TBI) coping, and family and institutional support process.

Large organizations are not able, by design or default, to make the timely incremental or the substantially unique changes and programmatic approaches necessary to  take on the wounded warrior and PTSD crisis that America is now facing.

Phased Living Environment
Of particular interest to AHR is the supportive living environment for the PTSD outpatient. It is becoming painfully clear that attempting to squeeze a veteran who is dealing with PTSD recovery in to shelters and other living options designed for and populated with those recovering from drug addiction, managing mental psychosis, and a range of other issues is counterproductive. And a PTSD recovering veteran who attempts to live at home with family can be just as detrimental, not only to the veteran but to the entire family.

Our solution is to use a Phased Living Environment (PLE). PLE's are designed in such a way as to accomplish the following:

• Access the isolating and/or sensitivity factor of a PTSD recovering veteran
• Place the veteran into the living environment phase appropriate for that level
• Challenge a progressive movement towards a recovery level of living environment
• Move the veteran to the progressively higher intensity, less protective environment
• Establish point of recovery benchmarks and move the veteran off of the program

Living Environment Phases
When we AHR refers to "living environment levels," the point of difference in these levels of living environment is best understood by a short, simple review of what makes PTSD so debilitative for many veterans. For a veteran in PTSD recovery, factors that often result in behavioral responses include:

• Familiarity with surroundings
• Multi-sensation activity at levels beyond the veterans comfort threshold
• Environmental triggers, typically unexpected or unrecognizable sounds and actions

We propose that controlling for these factors in a way that allows for progressive movement towards more activity that triggers, in conjunction with professional treatment and peer mentoring and support, is a unique and effective way in which to support PTSD recovery.

In other words, a PTSD recovering veteran who is provided with a living environment which is conducive to their recovery might include

1. starting in a quiet remote cabin environment with a couple supportive peers and peer manager, then
2. progressively moved out of the remote, quiet living to a moderate intensity living with more peers, and then
3. finally to an active living environment that resembles a normal living lifestyle

This is the AHR Camp Hero approach.

Partnering
Of course, those of us at Place of Solace who are sponsoring this retreat would be derelict in our own duties if we did not reach out to military and civilian organizations and partner where appropriate to ensure we are providing the best range of services to our men and women coming back from war. A great program is not buildings, horses, or wide open spaces, although all of that helps, but a great program is built on strong ties and networking to others who also have the veteran's best interest in mind and provide services to compliment ours, and ours to compliment theirs.