Press Release

College's Veterans Center Sponsors Talk by Dr. Paula J. Caplan on Thursday, September 22, 2011

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Psychologist Dr. Paula J. Caplan, author of When Johnny and Jane Come Marching Home: How All of Us Can Help Veterans, will be a guest speaker at Bunker Hill Community College on September 22, 2011. The talk, which is free and open to the public, will be held at 1:00 in Lecture Hall C202. This talk is sponsored by the College's Veterans Center.

In When Johnny and Jane Come Marching Home, Dr. Caplan evaluates the treatment traumatized veterans receive from their communities and psychologists when returning home from war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Caplan argues that mental health facilitators are inaccurate in diagnosing traumatized veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as "mentally ill."  In terms of the community, Dr. Caplan believes that citizens in America have not done their part in ensuring that our men and women in service are not continually sent to war. She gives advice on how the community can be of more assistance to veterans and how this can start with just a listening ear.

Dr. Caplan has published several works which focus on issues related to "Mental Health and Women" such as, Don't Blame Mother: Mending the Mother-Daughter Relationship, Bias in Psychiatric Diagnosis, Sex Differences in Human Cognition and The Myth of Women's Masochism. This will be Dr. Caplan's first visit to BHCC.

Bunker Hill Community College opened its Veterans Center in November 2010, when it served approximately 371 students. Current enrollment of veterans at BHCC stands at 440 students, which represents an increase of 19%. Celebrated war veteran and author Tim O'Brien will be returning to the College for his second visit on November 10th, 2011.

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About Bunker Hill Community College
Bunker Hill Community College is the largest community college in Massachusetts, enrolling approximately 18,000 students annually. BHCC has two campuses in Charlestown and Chelsea, and a number of other locations throughout the Greater Boston area. BHCC is one of the most diverse institutions of higher education in Massachusetts. Sixty-five percent of the students are people of color and more than half of BHCC's students are women. The College also enrolls nearly 600 international students who come from 94 countries and speak more than 75 languages.