Local veterans’ nonprofit enlists man’s best friend

Every day 22 American veterans commit suicide or die as a result of an accidental drug overdose.

Broken down further, this means that in the next 65 minutes, a family will lose a son, daughter, husband or wife not to the operations in the Middle East, but to a battle being waged at home against the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI).

With the recent death of a friend and the bond he shared with his dog fresh on their minds, two Memphis women decided something needed to be done to help others fight their struggles with the emotional aftermath of war. Out of tragic circumstances, the Paul Oliver Foundation was born with a purpose of healing.

“I couldn’t believe the numbers were true,” said co-founder Kimberly Harris, having researched the problem after the loss of her friend. “It sounded like a medical outbreak, but it seemed like something we should have been able to prevent with Ollie,” referring to the popular nickname of Paul Oliver, a former Marine and Memphis native who lost his battle with PTSD and TBI. Harris’s husband also served in the Marines and knew Oliver, so the death hit close to home on two fronts.

“I knew he was hurting, and other men and women were coming back with problems,” Harris said, “but how could I know what to do… when our government didn’t know how to help either?”

The Department of Veterans Affairs alerted President Obama and Congress to the rise in numbers in a 2012 report, discovering that more service members died that year as a result of suicide or accidental overdoses than the annual number of combat-related deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For the Oliver family, the statistics turned into reality on December 6, 2013, when his girlfriend found his body in the back bedroom of his home. The coroner’s report called it an accidental drug overdose, but Oliver had attempted suicide before, and some of his friends believe he succumbed to the emotional and physical wounds he brought back from three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Paul never fully came back from the war, not the same fun-loving, smiling kid I played football with in 2002,” stated Eric Beck, a childhood friend who attended Catholic High School with Oliver.

Involved in a roadside bomb incident during his second tour in Afghanistan and already carrying the weight of killing multiple insurgents during his first tour, Oliver qualified for 100% disability and was diagnosed with severe PTSD and TBI after leaving the service in 2007. Resorting to a mixture of prescription drugs and alcohol to ease the pain, he often secluded himself from friends and family for days with his dog – Scout – as his only companion.

Beck remembered the loyal bond: “Scout probably kept him going longer than he would have, honestly. He loved that dog so much, and you could tell [Scout] responded to Paul when he was in pain.”

Scout met Oliver’s girlfriend at the front door the night she discovered his body, and he led her to the bedroom where Oliver was curled up at the edge of his mattress, apparently cradling his canine friend as he slipped away.

Just prior to his death, Oliver was scheduled to enter into a court-mandated, 6-week treatment program at the Memphis VA hospital, and he shared plans with friends to start a group that helped fellow veterans with his struggles. With this in mind, Harris and Amanda Sutton-Butler knew they had to carry on his mission, and they knew Scout was the answer.

“I realized the Mid-South had zero organizations that specifically used service animals as a therapeutic treatment for veterans with mental health issues,” Sutton-Butler said. She also noted that the VA recognizes service dogs for physical impairments such as blindness, “but they do not currently use therapy animals for emotional issues such as PTSD or TBI, the two factors that contributed greatly to Paul’s death.”

In under a year, the two women founded a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit with the IRS, built a board of directors, and developed a network of potential partners and trainers. Their mission is to retrain rescue dogs as suitable companions to veterans and current service members affected by PTSD, TBI, and depression. They are currently working on a fundraising and social media campaign to announce the Paul Oliver Foundation to Memphis with the goal of training the first group of shelter dogs into service dogs by late 2015.

The organization also wants to spread awareness on the epidemic-level numbers of suicide among veterans and the apparent lack of resources currently in place to deal with mental health issues like the ones Oliver faced.

“Paul had the treatment scheduled,” Harris said, “but that was only because it was court ordered, and that was in 2013 – almost six years after he left the Marine Corps…and it was too late.”

VA hospitals across the nation fell under public, political, and media scrutiny earlier this year for extensive wait times, poor employee performance, and a perceived lack of response to the rising number of military mental health issues – problems which led to Secretary Eric Shinseki’s resignation.

Dr. Norman Itkowitz, a behavioral health psychologist at the Memphis VA Medical Center, offered his view on the recent changes in administration: “There is a visible effort to communicate better internally, reach out, and be accountable to the mission from the top-down. It’s a big ship, and it will take some time to turn it around, but I feel like we’re moving in the right direction.”

Dr. Itkowitz works with veterans and law enforcement officials who suffer from PTSD, anxiety, and depression every day, and he mentioned how the hospital is working to be more innovative with these mental health problems.

“You don’t see psychology integrated into primary care at any other hospital in the world,” he said, “but we are now working to be proactive with these veterans and bridge the gap between the physical and emotional treatment to create a mind, body, and spirit approach to how we help them.”

While many nonprofits are working to distance themselves from the negative perceptions of the Veterans Affairs department, and the VA itself has openly criticized nonprofits for curtailing funds away from government resources, the Paul Oliver Foundation advocates for the hospital to recognize therapy dogs as a legitimate practice for men and women suffering from emotional trauma.

“I think that anyone out there trying to help veterans is a good thing,” Itkowitz stated, “and I’m always willing to be open to working with them – not against them.”

Recent TV shows like A&E’s ‘Dogs of War’ have shed some light on service animals as an alternative method of treatment for veterans struggling with mental health problems. Focusing on the success stories of former soldiers and their path to finding peace, the program hopes to popularize the method. The founders of the Paul Oliver Foundation have similar hopes.

“I know Memphians wants to help these brave, tortured souls,” Sutton-Butler stated, “and if we can rescue even one dog and one person and pull them back from the brink, then Paul’s mission will be a success.”