Why I Spent a Year Plus of My Life Working on a Movie Called “SHEEPDOG”

By Amy K. Mitchell

When I served as the communications director for the U.S. House Veterans’ Affairs Committee back in 2012, we held a hearing that has stayed with me over the years – something unfinished more than a decade later. A young soldier had come to the Committee and as we learned his story, we asked him to testify in public. After multiple deployments, he had returned home with Post Traumatic Stress (PTS). The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) at the time overmedicated him.

He turned to drugs and alcohol to numb his trauma. His brother – who also had served and suffered from PTS – took his own life. This young man had also tried, repeatedly. It wasn’t until his pastor stepped in that he was able to begin the work of healing. He was encouraged to attend his pastor’s retreat for addiction. It was a four-week program – no phones, no alcohol, no drugs. Just each other. And through those thirty days, he found himself again. The problem was, the retreat had cost $12,000 and the VA wouldn’t reimburse him, despite his veteran status and their lack of comprehensive treatment options at the time. 

In the years following, working around our military, dozens of service members confided their pain in me. Some stemmed from the morality of war, others irreparably separated from their families due to multiple deployments, and still others from the crush of being in command and in turn shouldering the responsibility for thousands of lives.

Today, the VA allows for community care options for veterans’ mental health care. But what remains the same nearly 15 years later is the way in which we still treat mental health, and PTS in particular. Instead of treating PTS as we would a physical injury, we continue to segment this part of the population. Broken, different, traumatized, separate from the rest of us. As a nation, we still struggle to provide the right support to prevent veteran suicide. And those lives lost weigh on all who have worked in this field – from policymakers to frontline professionals.
 
That is what drew me to SHEEPDOG. As I considered joining the small, but scrappy team, I was confronted with the unfinished business of the past. Where government policy had failed, perhaps art and film could be successful. The filmmaker, Steven Grayhm – not a veteran and in fact, Canadian by birth – spent the past 14 years of his life working on SHEEPDOG, a movie completely shot in western Massachusetts. He and co-star, Matt Dallas, took time out of their own lives to travel the country, speaking to veterans, their families, veteran service organizations, and Gold Star family members. They listened and they learned. And what they heard became SHEEPDOG.

The rest of the cast signed on to SHEEPDOG for similar reasons – the chance to do something that could potentially save lives. Virginia Madsen, an Academy Award nominee and herself a Gold Star family member, lost her nephew – a veteran – to suicide. Vondie Curtis Hall, named after a soldier who saved his father’s life during World War II, has lost friends due to the effects of Vietnam’s Agent Orange. Dominic Fumusa, who had grown close to the military during the making of 13 Hours, wanted to pay tribute to our veterans. And Lilli Cooper, who plays the estranged wife in SHEEPDOG, personifies the loneliness of our military spouses when their partners come home in pain.

And so together, over the past year, we have built a national coalition of veteran service organizations – large and small – to help us spread the message of SHEEPDOG. These organizations work in our neighborhoods, in our hometowns, in our communities and represent the story of SHEEPDOG (the movie’s title comes from LTC Dave Grossman’s book, On Combat, in which he defines a Sheepdog as one who runs towards danger to protect the flock).  

In Kansas City, we work with the West Point grad, who after 20 years of service in the Army, now leads an organization that delivers free, evidence-based programming with overwhelming success. In Texas, a national organization ensures veterans have access to counseling services of their choosing. And in upstate New York, a collegiate-affiliated veterans’ program provides resources to veterans of all generations.

These organizations battle for our veterans’ lives every day. They work behind the scenes, changing lives one at a time – often without recognition or adequate funding. And that – much like the pastor’s work for the soldier more than a decade ago – is one of the keys to veteran suicide prevention, and SHEEPDOG demonstrates. The long days. The hard work. The responsibility of the community. SHEEPDOG is not Hollywood’s glossed-over version of what our veterans experience when they come home. It is hard. It is gritty. It is honest. It is real.

Steven has often said, if SHEEPDOG can save even one life, it will be the greatest Hollywood success story ever. Not for the fame or glory. But in knowing that a group of actors, filmmakers, former policy advisors, and an army of organizations came together to show fellow citizens how to help our veterans, beyond saying, “Thank you for your service.” In the past year, I believe, we’ve had more of an impact than a dozen Congressional hearings, and it has been well worth it.

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Amy K. Mitchellis a former special assistant to the Secretary of Defense, former communications director for the U.S. House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, and a co-producer and the military and veteran strategic advisor for the movie, SHEEPDOG, in theaters nationwide January 16, 2026 (check local listings).

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.