Digital Storytelling: Healing for the YouTube Generation of Veterans
Abstract
This chapter describes the "I Was There" Film Workshops, an initiative that enables American and Israeli veterans to produce short films in collaboration with other veterans about their service-related experiences. These films articulate aspects of their service experiences in a safe and supportive setting. Professional video instructors and health care professionals work closely with the veterans to facilitate their storytelling process and help them reclaim their personal narratives. Pre- and post-workshop surveys indicated that this intervention was effective in reducing post-traumatic stress symptoms for the majority of participants. Many participants reported their experience in the workshop as positive and empowering.
Keywords:
- Narrative
- Military experience
- PTSD
- Film workshop
- Digital storytelling
- Post-traumatic stress
Introduction
Reintegration after military service may be a challenging process for many veterans and service members. This chapter explores the use of filmmaking as a therapeutic tool for veterans. The "I Was There" model is a filmmaking program that enables veterans to reflect on their experiences and jointly create short artistic films. These films articulate aspects of their service experiences, traumatic events, and reintegration challenges. The chapter discusses the unique context of exposure to stress and trauma in military service and the challenges faced during the reintegration process.
Filmmaking and Video-Based Therapy
Video has been used in therapy for various psychological issues, including PTSD. However, the field is still in the early stages of development, and there is ongoing debate about its definition and effectiveness. Filmmaking therapy offers a unique approach, focusing on the product and utilizing the dimension of time to provide therapeutic benefits. The chapter highlights the potential of video-based therapy, especially filmmaking, in addressing trauma narratives and facilitating reintegration and recovery for veterans.
Conclusion
The "I Was There" Film Workshops have shown positive results in empowering veterans and reducing post-traumatic stress symptoms. The use of filmmaking as a therapeutic tool provides veterans with a creative outlet to communicate their experiences and promote reintegration. Video-based therapy, including filmmaking, holds promise for addressing trauma narratives and supporting veterans in their recovery journey.
About Dr. Rivka Tuval-Mashiach
Dr. Rivka Tuval-Mashiach is a clinical psychologist and senior lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Bar Ilan University, Israel. She is also the head of the Community Services Unit of NATAL, the Israel Center for Victims of Terror and War.
Her research and clinical work focuses on the use of narrative approaches to diagnose and treat people exposed to trauma and those with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). She also studies collective trauma, gender and trauma, and identity construction processes following traumatic events.
Dr. Rivka Tuval-Mashiach utilizes qualitative and mixed methods in her research and has published extensively on these topics.
Benjamin Patton
Founder and Executive Director
Ben founded Patton Veterans Project: I WAS THERE Films in 2011 after discovering the impact of the film workshop model on teenagers. He went on to oversee hundreds of workshops over the past seven years. Ben also spearheaded a ground breaking, three-year-long study to demonstrate the efficacy of the workshop on veterans with PTSD.
The youngest grandson of WWII’s General George S. Patton Jr., Ben is co-author of Growing Up Patton: Reflections on Heroes, History and Family Wisdom (Berkley-Caliber, 2012). Formerly a producer and development executive at New York City’s PBS affiliate, he also operates Patton Productions, LLC, a full-service video production company specializing in marketing and promotional videos and high-end family biographies for private clients.
Ben has a Masters Degree in Developmental Psychology from Columbia University-Teachers College and a BA from Georgetown University.
Filmmaking and Video-Based Therapy
Video has been used as an element in therapy in recent years for different populations and in the treatment of various psychological issues, including post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD (Wedding and Niemiec, 2003; Gantt and Tinnin, 2007, 2009; Johnson and Alderson, 2008; Nanda et al., 2010). However, despite the growing use of its growing use of the video medium in various therapeutic settings, the field is still in the nascent stages of development; therefore, no consensus has yet been reached regarding what precisely constitutes video-based or filmmaking therapy or how it works to alleviate patients’ suffering (Johnson and Alderson, 2008). Because films can be used in different ways and because they serve various purposes in therapy, the field is still lacking a definitive nomenclature. For example, the term “video therapy” is currently used to describe several uses of video in therapy, such as watching films (cinematherapy), video-recording oneself in order to witness and reflect on one’s behavior, or making films (Cohen, 2013). Consequently, several overlapping definitions and uses of video therapy exist. In addition, evidence of the effectiveness of using the video medium in therapy is only slowly beginning to emerge (Malchiodi, 2015). Lastly, there is a debate as to whether video- and filmmaking therapy should be considered part of art therapy or whether it should be considered its own, separate therapy. That is to say, although some scholars (e.g., Malchiodi) view video-based therapy as falling under the category of art therapy, others suggest that it differs in some essential ways from other creative arts therapies. Cohen and Orr (2015) suggest that video-based therapy shares certain common aspects with creative arts therapies including projection (where the video can be used to engage with difficult materials), the use of one’s imagination, the enactment of bodily sensations and emotions, and editing, which involves creativity and sense-making (Cohen and Orr, 2015). In contrast, Johnson (2015) differentiates therapeutic filmmaking from creative arts therapies in its focus on the product, which is usually not the focus of the latter. Another significant difference Johnson describes is the film’s unique relationship with the dimension of time. That is, filmmaking can be seen as being “multiply therapeutic,” as it is characterized by both the benefits of the timeless arts (such as sculpture, and drawing) as well as those of the time-based arts (such as drama or dance).
Because the field is still developing, we consider it important to offer our theoretical understanding of the way we use the video medium as a therapeutic tool, as well as the practical ways in which we use it. We view the use of films and video in therapy as operating on a continuum between being very artistic and creative (i.e., and therefore falling under the rubric of the creative arts therapies) and being a form of simple, non-stylized “digital storytelling” (for a detailed description of the continuum, see Barak and Tuval-Mashiach, unpublished). The use of video in our model is positioned on the side of the artistic pole. The main theory we base our work on is the narrative approach (Angus and McLeod, 2004; Bruner, 2004; Schiff, 2017).