FARMINGTON — A duo of behavioral health specialists is soliciting help from area combat veterans in a study of the role of therapy in healing from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Roy Harrington, a Marine diagnosed with the disorder nearly 20 years after serving in the Desert Storm conflict, is spearheading a conversation he hopes leads to specific changes in the way mental health professionals and the military view stress and trauma.

"I didn't know what the heck was wrong with me," Harrington said of the diagnosis. "I was crying all the time. It was affecting my job and my relationships. It just didn't make sense."

Harrington hopes by listening to other veterans' accounts of trauma and the emotional aftermath he will better understand the kind of conversation needed to prevent the disorder and heal those who already have it.

"Therapy for PTSD is all the same," he said, "but the practice, the approach isn't appropriate. You have to be able to go in there and know the other person will understand where you are coming from as a veteran."

Part of the solution may be pairing veterans with other veterans, Harrington said. Another piece could be better training of nonveteran therapists so they can find common ground. The goal is to isolate the trauma as an experience, not as something that defines a person, Harrington said.

"Veterans need to know that they're not the story, but the story is a part of their lives," he said. "The story is truth, and what means the most is the words I use."

Under Harrington's model, therapists would break with tradition and share more personal experience while maintaining professional distance.

"My pain might be apples. Yours might be oranges," Harrington said. "We can reconstruct the stories together and come up with watermelons."

Post-traumatic stress disorder affects as many as 25 percent of returning combat veterans. That number is doubled for veterans of American Indian descent, said Charles Stacey, a marriage and family therapist who works in Shiprock. Stacey is assisting Harrington with the study, which the two plan to be an informal discussion about veterans' challenges with the disorder and what therapies have proven helpful.

The disorder, which is known by as many names as there are battles, is characterized by a complex set of symptoms, including nightmares, flashbacks, hypervigilance and exaggerated startle responses. The symptoms must persist after the traumatic incident is over and cause significant disruption of normal activity.

Thousands of combat veterans are diagnosed with PTSD every year, but the diagnosis is not new. World War I veterans had shell shock; during World War II the symptoms were part of battle fatigue. The condition also is called war neurosis or combat stress.

Put simply, the disorder is what causes combat veterans and others who have survived intense trauma to constantly re-experience the emotion that accompanied the original event. PTSD is the reason veterans dive for cover during fireworks displays or other unexpected explosions.

"We know what it is and what it looks like," Stacey said. "What we want to know is what you do about it, and, specifically, how can you prevent it?"

A split from traditional therapy allows veterans to work on a more equal plane with their therapists instead of slipping into a submissive role.

"I don't want to determine a label for you, but I want you to tell me the story," Stacey said. "Not because I'm going to fix you, but because I'm genuinely curious. I will naturally begin to look for common points, like I would with any conversation, then I can reflect and ask questions and begin to understand."

Veterans suffering from PTSD often have no problem recreating the traumatic experience, Harrington said. Instead, many are trying to forget it.

The difficulty in healing from PTSD is that traumatic events effectively separate the facts and the emotion in the brain.

"It's easy for me to the tell story," Harrington said. "It's hard to connect the emotion with the story, so then it's hard to come terms with it."

Harrington wants veterans to be able to reconstruct memories in positive a way that helps them connect with others and create a healthier life. He also wants to help educate the military to watch for warning signs catching it before it happens, much like a First Aid course for mental health.

One of the biggest risk factors for developing PTSD while in combat is previous trauma, research has found. For example, soldiers with a history of abuse are more likely to develop the disorder during or after combat situations

Harrington wants veterans to be able to view PTSD and common symptoms such as dissociation, as positive survival techniques.

"You're out there seeing someone get killed, or experiencing overwhelming fear with gunfire and mine fields," he said. "You have to put away the emotions to function. Of course you replay it over and over. You need to look at it and see how you allowed yourself to survive."

The two men are looking for a group of about 10 veterans to participate in the first phase of the study, which will include an informal discussion about trauma, allowing Harrington to take note of the language used and gaps in mental health education before, during or after combat.

"The goal is to create a different kind of support group, a new kind of language so you feel comfortable going to the group," he said.