For Franconas, military family cause hits home

She and her husband are reportedly separated, but she makes it clear before an interview that she won’t talk about either her marriage or the Red Sox. “I am currently married,’’ is all she will say. Terry Francona, who is out of state, could not be reached for comment.

What Jacque Francona wants to talk about is the Home Base program, a nonprofit organization that treats and supports veterans and their families affected by “the invisible wounds of war’’: post-traumatic stress disorder, combat stress, depression, and traumatic brain injuries.

Today, she will speak at Northeastern University to school nurses as part of her volunteer work Home Base, a joint program of the Red Sox Foundation and Massachusetts General Hospital. Many children and siblings of deployed service members suffer their loved one’s absence in silence, she says, and she wants to tell school nurses what the psychological impact is on the family, and how they can help.

“One of the things I particularly love about the program is that they treat the whole family,’’ Francona says.

Home Base, founded two years ago, provides services to veterans with deployment and combat-related stress, and outreach and counseling to their families. According to Home Base, one in three veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan will suffer from PTSD, depression, or traumatic brain injury. Since the wars began, more than 15,000 men and women in Massachusetts have been deployed.

President Obama has announced that he is bringing the troops in Iraq home by the end of the year, and a spokesman for Home Base notes that in the coming year 1.4 million service members will return as the wars wind down, and that many of them will need services.

Nick Francona returned from Afghanistan in mid-October, to 29 Palms, a Marine base in California. His mother was there to greet him.

“It was great to see his face,’’ she says. “He looked thin but fit.’’

On Saturday, Nick, 26, arrived home in Brookline for two weeks before returning to his California base. His sister Leah, 21, has moved home from Knoxville, Tenn., to stay with her family while her husband is at war. They were married in January, and he was deployed in June. He is due to come home in February.