Childhood trauma set officer on path
Air Force psychologist says past helps her relate to patients
Capt. Joye Henrie has heard plenty of short, tidy answers about why people joined the Air Force, but her reasons — and her background — don’t fit into a twosecond sound bite.
Henrie works as a full-time psychologist, seeing clients at the 377th Medical Group, and acts as the Kirtland Air Force Base suicide prevention program manager.
After attending events where audience members were asked to share why they joined the Air Force, Henrie decided that if she were in that situation, she’d point to her father and three brothers all wearing a military uniform at some point. However, the answer wasn’t that simple.
Her father’s military stint ended with five years in a federal penitentiary, one of her brothers was kicked out of the Army for drug use and another brother washed out of basic military training.
“I come from intense poverty,” she said.
Her family was among the poorest in a poor neighborhood in Little Rock, Ark., and depended upon social services throughout her childhood. As a teenager, she was put in foster care.
The court ordered her into therapy, but she went through many therapists without finding one she thought was down-to-earth or understood anything she tried to discuss.
“It was a horrible experience,” Henrie said.
After a year or two in foster care, she decided to drop out of high school, but did something wrong with the paperwork and ended up in truancy court. The judge told her she was a blight to society and gave her the choice of going to a military school or juvenile detention.
Henrie chose the Arkansas National Guard Youth Challenge program. She spent five months living a military-type lifestyle.
The program took her out of her previous environment long enough for her to realize she didn’t have anything to go home to. When she finished the program at age 17, she accepted a friend’s invitation to move 1,500 miles away, to Salt Lake City.
Henrie went through ups and downs, searching for work and bringing her groceries home on foot.
Eventually, she landed a union job that stabilized her life. She married and started a family.
She worked in telecommunications for 10 years, but didn’t find it fulfilling or meaningful. She and her husband also became foster parents for emotionally disturbed children, which further showed her the importance of good mental health care.
“I think I just had exposure to a segment of society not everybody has exposure to and wanted a way to feel like I could help,” Henrie said.
So, she began laying the educational foundation for her psychology career and enrolled at the University of Utah. More ups and downs followed.
By the time she got to her doctoral program at the University of Arkansas, she was studying why some domesticviolence victims get post-traumatic stress disorder and some don’t. Henrie discovered one of the biggest predictors of PTSD was multiple traumas across a lifetime.
With a childhood like hers, she said, people either stay in that environment and repeat the problematic lifestyles of their families or they find a way out. Members of the second group often join the military, going from an environment of family abuse, gang violence and substance abuse to one of war and a lot of demands.
“Over time, it starts to take a toll on them,” Henrie said.
Repeated trauma affects mental and physical health, and can lead to substance abuse and suicide.
Henrie joined the Air Force because she realized a lot of people like her, people from a similar background, were in the military.
“Where better to serve than with my people, who are vulnerable and may not realize they’re vulnerable?” she said.
She was in her late 30s when she joined.
Henrie said it’s a misconception that only young airmen need mental health treatment. Master sergeants and majors make up a large percentage of her clients.
It’s easy to become complacent and not realize how many people are struggling, she said. People need to build trust and relationships to find out what’s going on and help, because saying hello in the morning just isn’t enough, she continued.
Airmen who notice someone struggling shouldn’t simply call mental health and be done with it.
“I think people underestimate what they can do as co-workers and wingmen and just decent human beings,” Henrie said.
Large epidemiological studies from multiple countries indicate that a major factor in preventing suicide is adequate social support. Airmen need to see people care about them and feel like they belong, she said.
Never leaving an airman behind isn’t something to check off once, Henrie said, but a lifestyle.