Johnson County nonprofit works to help veterans, first responders

OLATHE, Kan. (KCTV) - The Battle Within was created to help veterans and first responders with PTSD, work on their mental and behavioral health, and build community on their healing journey. The nonprofit is based out of Olathe, but now serves 30 states.

“It’s our mission to ensure that all veterans and first responders can overcome the barriers to be able to seek and stay with their mental health to reach their mental health goals,” said Justin Hoover, the executive director. “We were founded by over 100 veterans and first responders to really create an environment where people can find their path of healing and stay on it.”

It’s an important mission to Hoover, who was once a client himself.

“I’m an Iraq veteran,” said Hoover. “I came home and spent the next decade of my life just trying to figure stuff out. I was thinking I had it under wraps until my wife showed me, I was not. That started my own journey and really going through a program created by our clinical manager. They helped me have that pivot point in my life.

“I had a transformation, and I wanted to share that with others, so this is a great opportunity to be able to pay it forward to those who are in a place I once was.”

The organization helps with a network of licensed mental health professionals with expertise in trauma and has a variety of services, from training your own service dog with Dogs 4 Valor and equine therapy.

“Lots of things can be therapeutic,” said Rachel Willoughby Greene, the lead female clinician. “We find new ways of relating again and connecting and feeling a sense of calm and peace that we weren’t able to have before. Horses are really good at being able to facilitate that experience.”

Willoughby Greene is the equine therapist as well as one of the professionals who s and guides the women who come through the program.

“We know there is a cost and a heaviness that comes with doing this work,” said Willoughby Greene. “I always tell my clients you don’t have to be destroyed by it, but it does change you and there are impacts that come with it. For women, these are very male-dominated industries. With this program, women can come together and be around other women and be able to experience that connection and vulnerability that maybe they haven’t been able to have for a while and to experience what it’s like being around other women again and have really open and vulnerable conversations without the pressure of how we have to show up in a certain kind of masculine way.”

Jamie Wehmeyer, the clinical director, oversees the two clinical programs at The Battle Within. The first, The Frontline Therapy Network, a group of therapists that have been vetted to ensure they know how to work with veterans, first responders, and frontline medical staff.

The second, the 5-Day Revenant Journey, an intensive clinician-led, peer-ed program where those who need help can stay on site to help understand the traumas they’ve endured and introduce them to essential tools needed to help heal and develop greater resilience.

“I have heard story after story of veterans, first responders, frontline medical staff who go in to their first therapy session and they start to tell their therapist about some of the experiences they have had on the job and the therapist will start to cry, their eyes will get big and there may be disbelief in their story,” said Wehmeyer. “The message to that person seeking help is ‘my story is too much’, and they won’t go back. We need to know we have people who understand the unique traumas that are experienced by our veterans and first responders. We need to know they are able to hold the space and help them be able to heal.”

Hoover says they wanted to create an environment where people with the same or similar experiences could come together and know they aren’t alone.

“When they get here, they come to realize these are really human experiences than how we react to trauma,” said Hoover. “That your network is much wider than what you originally thought it was. You leave here with a much wider net.”

Following the death of KCFD firefighter-paramedic Graham Hoffman, The Battle Within knows the first responders in our area are hurting.

“These are very tight-knit communities,” said Hoover. “They work with each other, they know each other. It’s not just a job; it’s really a lifestyle. So when we lose somebody from that tight-knit community, it impacts everyone.”

The organization has mobilized a network of vetted therapists and say they are ready to help anyone who needs it.

“We know that it’s not just firefighters, it is all of our first responders who are experiencing that hurt,” said Wehmeyer. “It is the ones who are very close to the situation, who maybe were even on site during the tragic events that happened, but also there’s layers of that. There are layers within he first responder community and we anticipate that in the coming weeks, they are going to need .”

With May being Mental Health Awareness Month, The Battle Within wants those who may be hurting to know there is hope and they can reach out for help.

Copyright 2025 KCTV. All rights reserved.