Grantees
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DE-CRUIT Veterans Program

Overview:

DE-CRUIT is a New York City-based arts organization that uses theatre to meet the diverse mental health needs of military veterans. Founder Stephan Wolfert, a U.S. Army veteran, named the organization to convey that “We were recruited and ‘wired for war’ but never DE-cruited and unwired from war.” Wolfert based DE-CRUIT’s approach on his own experience of using Shakespeare’s verses to heal from trauma. From its inception, the program has used principles from classical actor training, as well as verses and characters from Shakespeare’s plays, to allow veterans to better understand the timelessness of soldiers’ suffering, which dates to Shakespeare’s time and earlier.

The mental health needs of military veterans are largely underserved. Clinical and epidemiological data show that NYC’s military veterans have been disproportionately affected by the COVID pandemic physically, psychologically, and economically. These trends persist due to a constellation of vulnerability factors that veterans contend with, including elevated rates of unemployment, homelessness, incarceration, and poverty.

Compounding these problems are veterans’ pre-existing mental health challenges, with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and depression rates greater than the general population. According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ 2023 National Veteran Suicide Prevention Annual Report, there were 6,392 Veteran suicide deaths in 2021, 114 more than in 2020. The impact of COVID has also affected veterans in unique ways, most notably as a traumatic triggering event: For many of NYC’s veterans, the exposure to stress, injury, and ongoing loss of life – once witnessed in combat – is repeating itself during the pandemic. That trauma is particularly prevalent for veterans in communities of color and low-income communities, where mental health problems resulting from the pandemic are not only more common but also more likely to go untreated.

There is thus a need to expand and deliver mental health services to the city’s most vulnerable veterans in ways that are responsive to their unique needs and that acknowledge the strength and resilience in their communities. DE-CRUIT meets this need by using theatre, premised on the philosophy that the arts are central to recovery, healing, and community transformation.

Grant:

Purpose: To support their theater workshops that utilize Shakespearian plays to spark dialogue and address the mental health needs of vulnerable military veterans, with a special focus on veterans of color, low-income, and formerly incarcerated veterans.

DE-CRUIT is an evidence-based, veteran-led program that combines theater and psychotherapy to treat trauma in veterans. The model uses theatre and specific techniques from classical actor training in combination with empirically-established trauma treatment techniques from cognitive processing therapy and narrative therapy to address posttraumatic stress in veterans. Using Shakespearian monologue form, veterans in the program construct their own personal trauma narratives which they share with other veterans in the group through a systematic, stepwise process. Each cohort finishes the program in a performance for an audience of the veterans’ family, friends, and community members. This culminating performance emphasizes the communalization of trauma that the psychological literature has identified as essential in fostering veterans’ healing and reintegration into civilian life. The Illumination Fund’s grant is being used to implement and evaluate the program online and at the Bronx Veterans Administration Center.

Impact:

DE-CRUIT’s ongoing research, undertaken by NYU’s Advocacy & Community-based Trauma Studies (ACTS) lab headed by Dr. Alisha Ali, has demonstrated significant decreases in PTSD and depression, as well as increased self-efficacy. EEG and heart rate variability readings show significant reduction in stress. Participants also report feeling less isolated and more engaged with community. The New York City program is currently being evaluated with support from the Illumination Fund and the National Endowment for the Arts’ Creative Forces Military Healing Arts Network.