WAR STORIES From The Forgotten Soldiers
Edward Beal, MD.
Edward Beal was born in Pipestone, Minnesota. He graduated from Dartmouth College, Drexel University College of Medicine and the Menninger School of Psychiatry. He served in the U.S, Army for two years during the Vietnam War as a Captain in the Medical Corps. He was on the faculty of the Medical Field Service School, Fort Sam Houston and was charged with teaching all Army physicians going to Vietnam about the prevention and treatment of tropical diseases in particular Malaria.
Since 1973 he has maintained a private practice of psychiatry in the Washington DC area. He has been a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry on the faculty of the Georgetown University School of Medicine for over forty years. He has had a judicial appointment to the Commission on Mental Health, Superior Court of the District of Columbia for over thirty years. He is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association as well as a Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. He is a recipient of the Georgetown University Vicennial Award and the Menninger School of Psychiatry Alumni Book Award for Popular Press Writing. He has appeared on the NBC Today Program and ABC, CBS, CNN television and NPR radio programs. He has been quoted in The Washington Post and U.S.A. Today. His essays appear in the Washington Post, in Today’s Liturgy, in Pulse Voices from the Heart of Medicine, and in CPF Quarterly. Over the past forty years he has made numerous local and national presentations at meetings and conferences.
He is the coauthor of Adult Children of Divorce, coeditor of A Failure of Nerve and single author of numerous scholarly book chapters and professional articles. In 2010 he was appointed to the Department of Psychiatry, Walter Reed Army Medical Center where he conducted tele-psychiatric interviews with service members and their families going to and returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
During those years Dr. Beal conducted almost 5,000 interviews with service members located throughout the United States at such installations as Fort Bragg, N.C., Fort Drum, N.Y., Fort Meade, MD., Fort Knox, KY., Fort Detrick, MD., Carlisle Barracks, PA., Fort Myer, VA., Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD., Fort Hood, TX., Fort Riley, KS., Fort Lewis, WA.
Sidebar
Cultural divide in America is a big problem. The divide between the civilian and military population is one of the biggest. How involved are most families in defending our country? Over Ninety-nine percent of American families are not involved. Serving in our armed forces has ceased to become a societal obligation. Rather, it is a family business. Eighty percent of our soldiers, those who come from that 1 % of the population, also have another family member in the military serving for us. It is the same people and the same families who are serving for us.
My book addresses this cultural divide by addressing the need for national service in chapter 23. While no one is advocating universal military service, some form of national service would be a big step toward bridging the cultural divide. There are numerous examples of how this works - how we can all be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.
Read chapter 23, “Her Problem should Be Ours” and this article by Fareed Zakaria on how “National Service Can Mend the Country”,.
Washington Post Article
Publications
Video Interviews
Family Matters: Produced by The University of the District of Columbia and The Bowen Center for The Study of The Family