The Red Sox Foundation and Massachusetts General Hospital Home Base Program serves veterans with deployment- and combat-related stress and TBI who have returned from deployment in Afghanistan and Iraq. We also serve their families by providing resources, expertise and outreach of the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Red Sox Foundation. The Home Base Program is in cooperation with the Department of Veterans Affairs.

 

The Home Base Clinic provides diagnostic, treatment and referral services at Mass General and through various community resources. The ultimate goal of the Home Base Clinic is to ensure that veterans connect with the care, services and resources that will help them ease or overcome the complex and far-reaching effects of combat or deployment-related stress.

 

The clinic features a multidisciplinary staff of psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, social workers and other clinicians from the MGH who coordinate, as necessary, with staff from the VA Boston Healthcare System and other providers to offer confidential individualized care and develop a tailored treatment plan to address the needs of each patient.

 

The Home Base Clinic gives veterans access to the most advanced care currently available and as well as the opportunity, if they wish, to participate in cutting-edge research protocols aimed at facilitating the development of improved treatments and increasing understanding of deployment- and combat-related stress, TBI and related combat-associated disorders. Even if you have previously accessed services for stress or brain injury, you are eligible to receive care through the Home Base Program. Our support is provided regardless of your ability to pay.

 

You are eligible for services if you have served, or are serving, in Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom) and/or Iraq (Operation Iraqi Freedom), or if you are an immediate family member of a serviceman or woman. Your discharge status does not affect eligibility for the Home Base Program.

 

Do I need care?

How do you know if you need care to treat a deployment- or combat-related stress disorders and/or traumatic brain injury? Have you experienced or witnessed a life threatening or distressing event, or received a direct or indirect blow to the head, and experienced ongoing difficulties with any of the following:



• Insomnia or nightmares
  
• Poor concentration or memory
• Depression, anxiety or irritability
• Lightheadedness or dizziness

 

If you have experienced any of these symptoms, you may be showing signs of a combat stress reaction or TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury).

To learn more about these conditions, click here.

 

To schedule a confidential appointment for further evaluation, call us at (617) 724-5202 or send an email to homebaseprogram@partners.org.

Home Base Clinic

Mark Pollack, MD

Director, Home Base Clinical Program

Mark Pollack, MD, serves as director of the Center for Anxiety and Traumatic Stress Disorders at Massachusetts General Hospital and is a professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. His clinical and research focus includes the course, pathophysiology and treatment of patients with anxiety disorders, including deployment- and combat-related stress and associated co-morbidities; development of novel pharmacologic agents for mood and anxiety disorders; uses of combined cognitive-behavioral and pharmacologic therapies treatment strategies; presentation and treatment of anxiety in the medical setting; and the pathophysiology and treatment of substance abuse. He serves on numerous editorial and advisory boards, and is on the Board of Directors of the Anxiety Disorders Association of America.

 

Ross Zafonte, DO

Program Director, Traumatic Brain Injury Clinic

Ross D. Zafonte, DO is the Earle P. and Ida S. Charlton Chairman of the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School, Vice President Medical Affairs Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, and chief of Physical medicine and rehabilitation at Massachusetts General Hospital. He has published extensively on traumatic brain injuries (TBI), other neurological disorders, as well as presented on these topics at conferences nationally and internationally. Dr Zafonte’s textbook is considered one of the standards in the field of Brain Injury care. He has helped to direct a tremendous growth in both the rehabilitation research and clinical arenas at Spaulding and the MGH.

Gary B. Kaplan, MD

VA Coordinator

Dr. Kaplan serves as the Director of the Mental Health Service and Chief of Psychiatry at VA Boston Healthcare System. He is a professor of Psychiatry, Pharmacology and Psychology at Boston University School of Medicine. His clinical and pre-clinical research focuses on the neurobiology and neuropharmacology of addiction, schizophrenia, and deployment- and combat-related stress. His research is published in journals of neuroscience and pharmacology and he has longstanding federal funding in these areas of interest.

His national role in psychiatry has been recognized by the American Psychiatric Association where he was conferred as a Distinguished Fellow. He is the lead author of a text for the American Psychiatric Press Inc. for psychiatric clinicians and residents entitled Brain Circuitry and Signaling in Psychiatry which examines the functional ciruitry and neurochemical pathways in psychiatric illnesses. Dr. Kaplan is a graduate of University of Pennsylavania and Drexel University College of Medicine (Hahnemann). His residency training in Psychiatry and post-doctoral research training in Pharmacology were at Tufts University School of Medicine.