{"id":1101,"date":"2015-05-19T18:30:20","date_gmt":"2015-05-19T18:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brainstreams.ca\/behind-the-mask-revealing-the-trauma-of-war\/"},"modified":"2025-07-04T09:16:57","modified_gmt":"2025-07-04T16:16:57","slug":"behind-the-mask-revealing-the-trauma-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/messageinabottle.ca\/bcbia\/behind-the-mask-revealing-the-trauma-of-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind the Mask: Revealing the Trauma of War"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"field field-type-link field-field-link-original-article\">\u00a0Brain injuries caused by blast events change soldiers in ways many can\u2019t articulate. Some use art therapy, creating painted masks to express how they feel.<\/div>\n<p>\u201c<em><strong>I THOUGHT THIS WAS A JOKE,<\/strong><\/em>\u201d recalled Staff Sgt. Perry Hopman, who served as a flight medic in Iraq. \u201cI wanted no part of it because, number one, I\u2019m a man, and I don\u2019t like holding a dainty little paintbrush. Number two, I\u2019m not an artist. And number three, I\u2019m not in kindergarten. Well, I was ignorant, and I was wrong, because it\u2019s great. I think this is what started me kind of opening up and talking about stuff and actually trying to get better.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hopman is one of many service members guided by art therapist Melissa Walker at the National Intrepid Center of Excellence (NICoE), which is part of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, in Bethesda, Maryland. Images painted on their masks symbolize themes such as death, physical pain, and patriotism.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalgeographic.com\/healing-soldiers\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">READ MORE and VIEW PHOTOGRAPHS&gt;&gt;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0Brain injuries caused by blast events change soldiers in ways many can\u2019t articulate. Some use art therapy, creating painted masks to express how they feel. \u201cI THOUGHT THIS WAS A [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/messageinabottle.ca\/bcbia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/messageinabottle.ca\/bcbia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/messageinabottle.ca\/bcbia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messageinabottle.ca\/bcbia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messageinabottle.ca\/bcbia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/messageinabottle.ca\/bcbia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1101\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/messageinabottle.ca\/bcbia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messageinabottle.ca\/bcbia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messageinabottle.ca\/bcbia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}