Dr. Christine Cronin, former U.S. Marine Corps captain and member of San Diego Post 731, approached the Post Executive Board in 2013 with a unique opportunity: opening up an alternative holistic medical treatment program to provide veterans and their families with options for PTSD- and stress-related conditions other than drug treatments.
Cronin offered to help partner her relationship as an instructor at Pacific College Oriental Medicine with the post.
Essentially, Post 731 would act as a satellite treatment facility for Pacific College, to train future acupuncture and massage therapists under supervised direction, free to the veterans community and their families.
Two and a half years later, the Wednesday night clinic has become a huge success. Cronin's detailed records substantiate that the clinic has provided over $60,000 in treatments; adding the post's records of cost for operations, the program has surpassed $75,000.
Cronin credits the program with treating over 1,952 patients, with a breakdown of 981 men and 971 women. 87 percent of treatments are pain-related while 12 percent is credited to anxiety.
Cronin's records detail the percentage served of veterans, retirees, active and reserve, along with branch of service.
Also receiving these valuable alternative services are veterans' families, including spouses, parents and children.
In the holistic belief system, illness and injury are often the result of disharmony in the mind-body-spirit, which they see as one. The disharmony can often come about from a dysfunction in any one of these areas. But holistic medicine believes that a dysfunction in one area affects the whole person and not just that one area of the body.