Film Review: Sheepdog: The Cost of Combat, the Urgency of Post Traumatic Growth

I am pleased, in this time of necessary urgent care for our returning veterans, that I was assigned this review. I wish, however, that Dr. Alicia Knox (Virginia Madsen) had been identified as the social worker she obviously was.

Read the full review of Wicked: For Good on socialworker.com

Read the full review on socialworker.com

by SaraKay Smullens, MSW, LCSW, DCSW, CGP, CFLE, BCD

    Canadian filmmaker Steven Grayhm’s 14-year determination to create a deeply personal statement about the costs of combat—his grandfather, a Polish farmer, survived captivity during WWII—resulted in the evocative, pull-no-punches film Sheepdog, a work Grayhm wrote, directed, and co-produced, also playing the leading role.

     In Sheepdog, Grayhm covers turf other films have examined—the trauma of military service, where you must learn to kill, as well as the trauma of returning home, where you are expected to live, love, and work as if brutality and murder, initiated and endured, never happened.

     But Grayhm also journeys where other films have not, showing how essential it is to treat chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a type of traumatic brain injury (TBI), but one, due to repeated brain trauma, that is progressive. He also stresses the possibility, over time, despite trauma, despite brain injury, of recovery, highlighting post-traumatic growth.

    Critical of Veteran Affairs bureaucracy, Grayhm highlights a largely dehumanizing system, offering limiting compassion for suffering veterans, where, as an example, a supervisor describes group therapy patients as animals. Scripting the link between mental health and economic security, such as getting and keeping a job, and the ability to buy a family home, the film’s insistent message is the essential roles loved ones, first responders, hospitals, and others—a returning vet’s entire community—must play in trauma recovery.

     Grayhm interviewed first responders, Gold Star families, mental health professionals and—most importantly—veterans, learning of grief, loss, and suicides of those served with, where homecomings, devoid of celebration and parades, were marked by withdrawal from loved ones, accompanied by uncontrollable savage rage, which according to Grayhm, produced “every word” of film dialogue.

Read the full review of Wicked: For Good on socialworker.com