Calming Audio Kits Help Returning Warriors Come Back Home

    AKRON, OH, February 01, 2012 /24-7PressRelease/ -- In keeping with its 20-year commitment to U.S. veterans and service members, Health Journeys Inc., an Akron, Ohio-based mind-body media company that produces audio and video resources for health and wellness, will release two unique, troop-vetted kits to help returning warriors integrate back into civilian life.

For the roughly 70 percent of warfighters who will be dealing with the normal stresses and strains of returning home, the Military Transition Kit combines five different guided imagery audio programs by Belleruth Naparstek to help with restful sleep, relaxation, loss and grief, and basic self-calming exercises.

For the 30 percent who suffer significant distress from having experienced difficult combat-related experiences, the company has assembled the War Trauma Remediation Kit. It contains highly targeted audios that focus on counteracting posttraumatic stress, panic, anger, depression and addiction - some of the more commonplace issues facing our more troubled troops.

Health Journeys audios were found effective for posttraumatic stress in Dr. Jennifer Strauss' randomized, controlled clinical trials at Duke University and the Durham Veterans Administration Medical Center, and are used in roughly 100 veterans' hospitals and Vet Centers nationwide.

They are also distributed by the U.S. Marine Corps through their crisis call centers, and are part of the U.S. Army's Morale, Welfare and Recreation audio distribution downrange in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most recently, Fort Sill in Lawton, Okla., has been successfully testing the audios with returning soldiers during the Army's RESET phase.

According to Naparstek, a clinical social worker who co-founded Health Journeys with George R. Klein in 1990, both the Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration are on an intensive, fast-tracked mission to find new methods and practices that will help our returning troops.

Self-administered guided imagery materials are particularly attractive for two reasons: one, there are not enough qualified therapists to meet the surging need; and two, techniques such as guided imagery, hypnosis and meditation have been found to be particularly effective for war-related distress.

Naparstek, the author of Invisible Heroes: Survivors of Trauma and How They Heal, says "Every one of us at Health Journeys is thrilled to have something of proven utility to offer our returning heroes."

Evidently the National Defense Centers of Excellence in Washington DC agrees. They cited Health Journeys guided imagery as one of a dozen promising practices in a White Paper they published and disseminated in May, 2011.

Company President Cindy Stalnaker, a Marine wife herself, underscores, "We owe our veterans a lot." That's why Health Journeys has dramatically discounted the price of these kits, and why they offer a 15 percent discount (with a promotional code found on their website) to members of the military and their families, for anything else in their webstore not otherwise discounted.

Go to www.healthjourneys.com to view the entire catalog of Health Journeys' products. For more information, contact Elizabeth Hauser at [email protected] or call 800.800.8661 ext. 100.

Health Journeys Inc. has successfully pioneered and tested scores of CDs and downloads for over 50 health and mental health challenges. Programs are used by Kaiser Permanente, Blue Shield of California, the U.S. Army, the Department of Veterans Affairs and hundreds of hospitals and clinics nationwide.

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