Barbara Van Dahlen

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Barbara Van Dahlen is an American psychologist who founded a non-profit organization called Give an Hour in order to help emotionally and mentally injured war veterans through offering free counselling. Give an Hour was founded in 2005 and is now composed of nearly 7,000 volunteers who have given an estimate of 57,000 hours of free service to soldiers who have served in the Middle East. Barbara has taken part in discussions concerning mental issues of men in uniform in Pentagon, Veterans Administration, White House, and Congress.

Achievements

Why Barbara Van Dahlen is Extraordinary

Dr. Barbara Van Dahlen has the psychological expertise being a successful doctor with 19 years of experience under her belt. She used it in helping those who serve in the military to cope with invisible injuries they sustained by fighting an ugly war. Give an Hour has a competent president in Barbara. She is a Vietnam soldier’s daughter. Her mother lost her mind when she was still a young girl. To make matters worse, she lost her older brother when she was only 15. For a young girl like her, death is unacceptable. Good thing her father never left her side and helped her through that difficult moment.

To honor him and his comrades, she set up Give an Hour, a non-profit national organization that offers free sessions to war veterans to help them address their traumatic experience. From a small organization, Give an Hour now has nearly 7,000 volunteers who are more than willing to spare an hour of their week or day to help soldiers cope with depression and anxiety.

Give an Hour Gives 57,000 Hours of Free Consultation

According to Barbara:

"A core part of this work involves helping veterans and their family members understand that they are not alone, that what they are experiencing is an understandable reaction to the brutality of war; that the issues they are grappling with are real, and that seemingly insurmountable problems can be overcome." (Source: The Huffington Post)

With that in mind, Barbara knows that this is just the beginning. Although their hours keep increasing, she is aware that they can do so much more. What she wants to do is enlist the help of more mental professionals so they could provide 40,000 hours of consultation every week.

Give an Hour does not only help soldiers but also their families, which according to their definition is anyone who loves or cares about someone in the military service. They also offer trainings to professionals and volunteers to fine-tune their services. She wrote in her blog in an article published by the Huffington Post that each community member can take part in their mission by doing the following:

If you know a service member, veteran, or military family member in need of support, encourage them to visit Give an Hour's website to find a listing of local volunteer service providers who are ready to help.
If you are a licensed mental health professional interested in donating an hour a week to support veterans, their loved ones, and their communities, register as a volunteer provider through our Web site.
If you are interested in doing more, visit the Community Blueprint Network, an initiative of the Points of Light that was developed by Give an Hour and 13 other national service organizations and designed to help communities and local leaders coordinate services to support veterans and military families.(Source: The Huffington Post)

TheXtraordinary.org is spreading the good news about the existence of an organization such as Give an Hour to help them further their scope. We believe that this can be adopted by any nation as war is something we have to live with since the beginning of time.

Top Reasons why Barbara Van Dahlen is Extraordinary

She founded Give an Hour, a non-profit organization that offers free consultation to war veterans who have sustained invisible injuries.
She is a daughter of a Vietnam War veteran. Give an Hour is her way of honoring her father.
She raised her two daughters by herself after she and her first husband were divorced. She is currently married to a fellow psychologist.
She was included in TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2012.
She is a licensed doctor with Ph.D. from the University of Maryland.
She is a recipient of the Rosalee Weiss Distinguished Public Service award from the American Psychiatric Association.
She launched You Serve LLC to forge collaborations between the government and nonprofit sectors in providing outreach to the military community.
She was awarded Working Woman of the Year in 2010 and received a citation as one of Woman’s Day magazine’s 50 Women Who Are Changing the World.
She was selected as a featured speaker at the annual Rosalynn Carter Symposium on Mental Health Policy and also testified before the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs on the topic “VA Mental Health Care: Addressing Wait Times and Access to Care."
Give an Hour was chosen as one of the five winners of the White House's Joining Forces Community Challenge, sponsored by First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden.

Biography

Biography of Barbara Van Dahlen

Date of Birth: Friday, 27 November 1959 | Born in: / Nationality: United States of America

The daughter of a war veteran herself, Barbara experienced the Vietnam War although she wasn’t physically present in the battlefield. Her father’s stories made her feel more involved than any other young people of her age. On the contrary, her father never told them about the ugly side of war. All she and her three brothers heard from him was accounts of bravery, honor, and heroism. Those stories profoundly shaped Barbara’s formative years and she grew up with tremendous respect for men in service. But it wasn’t her father’s involvement in the Navy that compelled her to have a career in psychology. As soon as her father was back from service, their mother suffered from mental illness, making her unfit to care for Barbara and her brothers. In order to get custody, her father had to fight for his rights in the court which was fortunately granted to him.

Since then, Barbara realized the magnanimity of the mental health issues’ effect on the family. Tragedy again struck when his older brother drowned, which led her to recoil and keep to herself. Afraid that his daughter might eventually lose her mind, Barbara’s father did all he could to reach out to her and help her cope with her grief. It was an overwhelmingly difficult time for the family, and Barbara would have ended up like her mother had it not been for her father.

It marked a turning point in Barbara’s life and would eventually direct her course as she grew older and began to lead a career of her own. She was determined to understand how the human psyche works in order to help others who are going through a difficult phase in their life. She was well aware that without her father who has always been there to support her, it would have been twice as hard for her to handle pain.

Her passion for human mental behavior got her as far as being recognized in the field of psychology. Known as one of the most effective psychologists, she had a fruitful career. Until she felt that she has to do more. It was her innate desire to serve and give back that propelled her to go out of her comfort zone and give a slice of her time to others. Little did she know that her fearless act would become as big as it is now. What is it that she has done and where did she find the courage to do it? Let’s get to know this soft-spoken doctor and be not deceived by her manner of speaking. As gentle as she sounds, this woman has a heart and disposition of a warrior.

Barbara’s Early Life

Barbara has always been proud of her father and what he has achieved in his life. Her talks would always include him and the career she would later on have was her way of further honoring him. Barbara’s father lied about his age just to be able to join the American Navy and fight during World War II. Unlike other boys his age who dodged military service, Barbara’s father went out of his way to serve his country.

When Barbara was born in 1960, she grew up surrounded by boys—her three brothers and father. She was very close to all of them and hungered for the stories about heroism that their soldier father always told them. He regaled them with stories about camaraderie with his fellow soldiers and how they don’t hesitate to lay down their life for the sake of their brothers. He left out the gory parts of being in service.

However, there were times when her father would just burst into anger at the slightest provocation. Later on, Barbara would infer as a professional psychologist that his father’s sudden fits of anger were brought about by trauma that remained untapped. She even said that she wished she had the chance to ask her father about the ugly face of war, the part that he chose to keep to himself.

The family went through a difficult time when Barbara’s mother started showing signs of mental illness. It worsened until it came to the point wherein she could no longer take care of her kids. Although she was still very young then, Barbara clearly recalls how her father fought for their custody. In a way, she now thinks that better policies must be in place for couples who encounter the same problem that her parents did to make custody battle less straining.

In the long run, her father won their custody and raised the four of them by himself following their divorce. Barbara didn’t mind staying with her father because of the kind of man that he was. He did his best to teach his children to face challenges head on. One more thing that he taught Barbara was the value of hard work. Under his tutelage, Barbara grew up with so much respect for what people do for a living no matter how insignificant they seemed to be. More importantly, Barbara developed a high esteem for soldiers like her father.

When Barbara was 15 years old, her older brother drowned in an attempt to save his girlfriend. Heroism was ingrained in their system and unfortunately it cut his brother’s life short. It would have been easier for Barbara to accept if she wasn’t that close to him. Still too young to go through such an intensity of pain, Barbara’s world crashed. Apparently, she was showing early signs of depression that when prolonged, could lead to serious mental illness. Because of what happened to her mother, Barbara’s father must have seen the symptoms just in time to save Barbara from sinking deeper.

After her brother’s death, Barbara pretty much kept to herself and became another person overnight. She did not know how to deal with the premature death in her family, especially of one very dear to her. Even though Barbara’s father was also grieving for the loss of his son, he couldn’t let his only daughter’s sanity slip. He had to think of his son’s death as secondary to Barbara’s well-being.

What he did was constantly watch her and talk to her until she slowly came into terms with the fact that her brother is gone. It was not easy but Barbara was able to come out of depression.

First her mother and then herself—Barbara wanted to find out what leads human beings to feel the way she did and how each person copes with difficulties. Barbara has been through a lot considering that she was only a teenager. This early initiation to grief toughened her up and soon contributed to her becoming fearless.

Barbara decided that in order to get a broader understanding of the human mental mechanisms, she has to study.

Having a Career in Psychology

When Barbara survived her near-depression encounter, she decided to take on a career in psychology. As she was taking her graduate studies in 1986, her father died. Her father’s demise became more bearable since she was already equipped with knowledge about handling fear and grief.

She kept on pursuing further studies in psychology and finally completed her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in 1991. She shortly began a prolific career as a clinic psychologist in Maryland. It proved to be a good choice because she soon became a popular doctor in her own right. On the other hand, her marriage was not going so well due to unforeseen factors she attributes to invisible injuries of long time ago that she is yet to resolve. The marriage fell apart and she was left with her two daughters. Much like her father, Barbara finds herself in a situation wherein she must be fearless to protect her little ones.

Parenting According to Barbara

Not different from most parents, Barbara felt the inevitable urge to protect her girls from the harsh world. Being a professional psychologist, however, gave her access to information on how to raise secure and independent children. She advises parents to assure their kids that they are going to do their best not to allow anything bad to happen to them, while educating them about the reality of death or separation.

According to her, she discovered that she could be fearless upon seeing her eldest daughter right after giving birth to her. The moment she saw her, she just knew that she won’t hesitate giving her life to protect her children. That’s the kind of fearlessness invoked by being a parent. Later on, she would find out that the kind of fearlessness she felt also existed outside the context of parental love.

She was divorced but found another love in the person of a fellow psychologist. He was the first person who told Barbara that she is doing something worthwhile and that as a doctor, he is proud of her efforts in giving back to people who need mental care but are hesitant to seek consultation or simply couldn’t afford its cost.

Give an Hour Has Began

Just as everything began to settle down after her faulty marriage, Barbara felt that she ought to do more than help her patients recover from trauma. She realized that just like parents to their children, soldiers are ready to give their life for the country and their brothers. After the 9/11 bombing, Barbara saw footages of soldiers being sent to Afghanistan and later on news about them returning home to their families. It reminded her of her father, how he tried to deal with his traumatic experience on his own, thereby affecting him and his family as well.

Everything came back to her including her father’s sudden fits of anger and her way of dealing with pain. In 2005, she finally established Give an Hour to honor her father and serve the soldiers who valiantly fought to protect their people. The name Give an Hour was suggested by her then-13-year-old daughter, saying that she should name her organization as such because that is exactly what she wanted to ask her fellow psychologists to do.

In her speech before the Congress, she gave them a backgrounder about the foundations of Give an Hour:

"I founded Give an Hour™ in 2005. As the daughter of a World War II veteran, I became concerned about the stories coming home about those who were serving. Although the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs were doing more than ever before in their efforts to care for the invisible injuries of war, service members were clearly struggling and their families were suffering. Early studies by Charles Hoge and others indicated that significant numbers of service members would continue to come home with post-traumatic stress, traumatic brain injury, depression, anxiety, and other understandable consequences of exposure to the brutality of war." (Source: U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs)

What makes Give an Hour unique is the way they offer their services. Because of the stigma that people consulting psychologists usually suffer from, their patients remain anonymous. They only ask for their zip code and have them choose who to consult. Since it began in 2005, Give an Hour has grown into an organization with almost 7,000 volunteers ranging from professional psychologists, psychiatrists, counsellors, and spiritual advisers. Since they have no way of tracking down the number of people they have helped due to the nature of their service, they get the statistics from their doctors and volunteers who keep tabs of the number of hours they give to the patients.

To date, they have given over 57,000 hours of free consultation to thousands of soldiers in the United States. Encouragement from other organizations such as The Mission Continues, Team Rubicon, Blue Star Families, and the Community Blueprint Network keep her going. From providing counseling to those who sustained invisible injuries while fighting for their country, Give an Hour has become a vehicle for these service people to get reintegrated to society.

Studies show that more and more soldiers are becoming too disillusioned that they resort to killing themselves. Suicide among soldiers is one more thing that Barbara would like to curb by setting up Give an Hour. Sometimes all they need is professional help, but because of the existing stereotype that only weak people consult mental doctors, they don’t consider that option. Through Give an Hour, Barbara is spreading the word about the reality of trauma and how anyone can be prone to feeling anxious and depressed. She wants people to understand that there is nothing wrong about seeking help. More often than not, getting professional help could prevent irreparable damage anxiety and trauma create to a person’s mind.

When Barbara was included in TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2012, Admiral Mike Mullen wrote the following to describe her:

"Barbara cares for people and is dedicated to making their lives better. She has served thousands nobly and has been an extraordinary example for all of us in her life and her giving." (Source: Time)

Organizations and Programmes Supported

Give an Hour
Habitat for Humanity International's Military and Veterans
Veterans Affairs
Veterans Advantage
Community Blueprint Network
American Psychiatric Association
You Serve LLC
Got Your 6
The Mission Continues
Service Nation
TAPS (the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors)
SVA (Student Veterans of America)
Bristol Myers-Squibb Foundation
Booz Allen Hamilton

Awards and Achievements

1991: Received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Maryland
2005: Founded Give an Hour
2009: Received the Rosalee Weiss Distinguished Public Service award from the American Psychiatric Association
2009: Launched You Serve LLC
2010: Awarded Working Woman of the Year
2010: Received a citation as one of Woman’s Day magazine’s 50 Women Who Are Changing the World
2010: Selected as a featured speaker at the annual Rosalynn Carter Symposium on Mental Health Policy
2011: Testified before the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs on the topic “VA Mental Health Care: Addressing Wait Times and Access to Care"
2012: Give an Hour was chosen as one of the five winners of the White House's Joining Forces Community Challenge, sponsored by First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden
2012: Named by TIME as one of the Most Influential People in the World
Serves on Habitat for Humanity International's Military and Veterans Advisory Committee
Recipient of the Maryland Governor’s Volunteer Service Award
Named a winner in the White House’s Joining Forces Community Challenge