Black Hills veterans in treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder are doing more than getting their own lives back on track.

They're helping soldiers almost 4,000 miles away in Suriname get treatment, as well.

This past week, three Surinamese officials met with veterans in treatment during a three-day trip to the Black Hills to learn about PTSD treatment in South Dakota. The trio toured local hospitals, met with experts and learned about support organizations, all with the goal of developing a similar policy back home.

"What I hope is that we can really do something with this," said Maj. Henk Amstelvee, nurse manager at a government mental health hospital in Suriname's capital of Paramaribo. "I want to start. I can't wait for the implementation. I saw too much of how it can work."

The trip was part of the National Guard's State Partnership Program, which has linked Suriname, a tiny South American country, with South Dakota for cultural and expertise exchanges since 2006.

With the information collected, the goal is to develop an implementation plan for treating post-traumatic stress disorder in Suriname's armed forces, said Maj. Gustaaf Samijadi, head of personal care for the armed forces.

"PTSD exists everywhere there is extreme stress," said Herman Jintie, nursing director at the psychiatric hospital in Paramaribo.

An interior war tore Suriname apart in the late 1980s. Twenty years later, some active duty soldiers and veterans are showing symptoms of PTSD.

"We were brothers, and we started to fight," Jintie said. "A lot has been done to each other."

Symptoms of the disorder can include flashbacks, emotional numbness, sleep problems and being easily startled, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.

On Friday, the group flew to Hot Springs on a Blackhawk helicopter for a tour of the Veterans Affairs Medical Center there. During the tour, the three met with staff from the addiction and PTSD treatment programs and talked with veterans enrolled in the stress-treatment program.

That program is seven weeks of intensive individual and group treatment. No more than 12 people, in groups called cohorts, are admitted at a time for inpatient treatment.

"It's an honor to be invited to share the type of treatment that's going on with our servicemen and women and to have them come and say: 'You have the best program in the world. We want to emulate you,'" Robert Dorr, chief of staff for the Black Hills VA Health Care System, said.

Yet Dorr admitted that the U.S. has a long way to go before diagnoses of PTSD are without stigma.

"As a soldier, you're trained to be strong, to be powerful, to be brave, to not show fear," Dorr said. "When PTSD hits you, you feel less than. It's such a difference than how you feel during your training."