LOVE AFTER WAR: Saving Love, Saving Lives is a moving 57 minute documentary that introduces viewers to injured and wounded veterans and their partners who candidly share how they won the battle to restore emotional closeness and physical intimacy after surviving catastrophic combat-related injuries. The inspiring film also features insights from experts in the field of sexuality and disability.
People who return from deployment with a serious mental or physical disability experience more marital stress and divorce than their non-disabled peers.
Furthermore, failed intimate relationships contribute significantly to suicide, intimate partner violence, child abuse, substance abuse, and homelessness.
Dr. Mitchell Tepper, Executive Director, Director, Producer, and Writer, is a sexologist who has been living a full life with spinal cord injury for over 40 years. He has long been personally and professionally dedicated to ending the silence around sexuality and disabilities. Dr. Tepper has been working with wounded veterans since speaking at the Road to Recovery Conference for wounded veterans in 2006. Through spearheading the Wounded Troops and Partners: Supporting Intimate Relationships Conference in Washington DC in 2008, he was successful in getting the issue of sexual health and intimacy for wounded warriors on the national radar. He assisted the Bob Woodruff Foundation in organizing their High Impact Collaboration Conference, From Injury to Intimacy, in 2014. He has been instrumental in the implementation of couple’s retreats within the VA system and in training members of the Sexual Health and Intimacy Workgroup at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Dr. Tepper has published peer reviewed articles in medical and sexual health journals on comprehensive sexual health care for catastrophically injured warriors.