If Routh went Cuckoo after getting out of the military I doubt it was due to PTSD. Again they don’t just let you into the military because you walk into the recruiting office. I’ll be interested to hear what kind of psychotropic drugs the docs had him on when he went to the gun range.
From my readings on PTSD most people who have it are not violent. They are fearful and if anything they may harm themselves.
Can you believe that guys like Chris Kyle and his friend would have taken somebody who they knew had already threatened to kill people to a gun range and stick a loaded weapon in his hand? I doubt it. They were security experts.
The whole thing is weird.
There is a strong suspicion, perhaps even a medical diagnosis, that he was a paranoid schizophrenic, which would make a lot of sense. Schizophrenia is a cruel disease, and most of the time it begins slowly and becomes progressively worse.
Typically the age window for developing schizophrenia is from age 16 to 28, but importantly, that window is divided in half based on how the disease manifests itself.
In the earlier years, victims demonstrate large deficits on almost all cognitive measures: arithmetic, executive function, IQ, psychomotor speed of processing and verbal memory.
Those with late-onset schizophrenia demonstrate minimal deficits on arithmetic, digit symbol coding and vocabulary, but larger ones on attention, fluency, global cognition, IQ and visuospatial construction.
Importantly paranoid schizophrenia may be a different kind of schizophrenia altogether. Just paranoids, without schizophrenia, are known for their acute senses and strong cognitive faculties, seemingly the opposite from just schizophrenics. Having both conditions is different from having just one or the other.
In any event, the disease might take years before it is obvious, both to others and the person themselves.