Using AboutFace: Real PTSD Stories
Using AboutFace: Real PTSD Stories
What is AboutFace?
AboutFace is an educational website that explains posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) using video stories and easy-to-read text from real Veterans, family members, and Veterans Affairs (VA) treatment providers to help explain the experience of living with PTSD and the benefits of effective PTSD treatment.
The Veterans on the site span more than 6 decades of military experience and give valuable advice about their PTSD symptoms and treatment. Partners, children, and friends talk about what it's like to live with someone who has PTSD. Treatment providers (including social workers, psychologists, and psychiatrists) explain what PTSD is, answer questions they've often been asked, and describe the treatments that get the best results.
AboutFace encourages Veterans to seek treatment—and it's also a useful tool for clinicians and Peer Specialists.
How can I use AboutFace with clients?
AboutFace offers a few ways for users to learn about PTSD:
- Move step-by-step through the basics of PTSD and treatment
- Browse videos on topics that are most relevant to their own experience
- Search using filters, including military service details, PTSD therapies, and topics such as: How does PTSD affect relationships?; Military Sexual Trauma (MST); Race, Culture, and PTSD; Moral Injury and PTSD; and Substance Use and PTSD.
The site includes Resources for Professionals, including links to pages in AboutFace that offer a starting point for discussion. In addition, there are downloadable guides for Clinicians and Peer Specialists to use in their practice.
"I recommend using AboutFace for Veterans who are beginning treatment. I also talk about the website as a great option for their family...to hear about recovery stories and how PTSD impacts family...and ways family can be supportive during treatment and beyond."
- Elissa McCarthy, PhD Clinical Psychologist, VA
"We use AboutFace videos in our PTSD Orientation and in our Introduction to PTSD class. I have also used AboutFace videos in individual sessions. It helps the Veterans realize that they are not alone and helps me explain how much treatment can help. It gives them hope."
- Kyle Milk VA Peer Specialist
Who else may benefit from using AboutFace?
AboutFace testimonials give anyone who watches them firsthand insight into the PTSD experience. Consider sharing AboutFace with:
- Clients in individual or group treatment settings
- Family and friends of a client dealing with PTSD
- Other providers and trainees as a teaching tool
- Any professional who may work or interact with Veterans who have PTSD (e.g., educators, clergy, police) to sensitize them to military culture and PTSD
- Anyone (students, Veterans, clients, etc.) interested in a career as a mental health provider
“I LOVE this website and recommend it to every Veteran I meet within my role as a PTSD therapist. My interns, postdocs, and PTSD team colleagues do as well. It’s commonplace for us to show these videos in our therapy sessions to help with treatment engagement or PTSD education. They really do help people opt into treatment. Hearing from other Veterans is much more helpful than hearing it from a clinician.”
- Shanna Treworgy, PsyD, Clinical Psychologist, VA
"AboutFace is extremely helpful at the start of each training year. We have the new interns and postdoctoral fellows watch the clinician videos to learn how to introduce evidence-based PTSD treatments and how to engage Veterans in the treatments. We also have them watch the Veteran videos to learn about PTSD."
- Sonya Norman, PhD Clinical Psychologist and Director of VA's PTSD Consultation Program
You May Also Be Interested In
VA/DoD Clinical Practice Guideline for PTSD (2023)
Get information on evidence-based treatment recommendations for PTSD.
Clinician's Guide to Medications for PTSD
Get key information and guidance on the best medications for PTSD.
