About

Signature Wounds is a journalistic project created by me, Scott Gaulin to explore how combat PTSD effects spouses and families of veterans returing from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

The project will be the culmination of a 6 month long fellowship with The Ohio State University designed to take traditional print reporters and transition them to working on the web. When I applied to the program back in June of 2009 I wasn’t sure of what direction I wanted to go in. But I knew I wanted to do a piece on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  I was accepted to the program at the end of October and began to pour through every bit of research I could find. There were stories on the lack of doctors, too many anti-depressants, experimental treatments and holistic therapies. I interviewed soldiers, attorneys and physcologists and studied reams of government reports. Thoughout all these hours of reports, stories and interviews there seemed to be one thing that was missing. The one question that I kept coming back to, the one thing I saw no mention of in the piles and stacks of papers. What about their families? How do they cope with and understand a disorder that has no clear symptoms or treatments?