With all due respect ... after the Chris Kyle incident I wouldn’t want someone being treated for PTSD to be anywhere near me with a firearm.
Well this right here is an outrage from the jump I'll tell you what.
My “war” was the Cuban Missile Crisis. My ship entered GTMO Bay to evacuate military dependents and civvy contractors. So no PTSD here. Never fired a shot in anger.
I have PTSD from escaping the bombing of the World Trade Center. It’s been a long time and most of the most intense part of the effect is gone, but to this day I cannot see an emergency vehicle (police, fire, ambulance) in action without snapping into fight-or-flight mode. At this point I know what’s happening well enough to control it.
Once in a while, however, I will snap right back to various points in time during the event as if I was there again - in the dark, smoke-filled stairwell packed in with thousands of others like sardines and barely moving... or when I came back to the scene after the escape, a surreal landscape of emergency vehicles lining block after block in every direction. It’s not as if I believe I am actually there again though, it’s just a very vivid memory that got burned in deep.
Early in my life I've been in a fire where I truly thought I was gonna die (my life *did* flash before my eyes).Later on I was on a flight that had a bomb threat phoned in on it.And then I worked in a big city ER for 30 years in which I witnessed more death and suffering than most people can imagine.
And yet,despite those experiences (and the many,many *very* vivid memories that are still with me),I've managed to live a reasonably normal life.
However,I've never experienced anything resembling combat.I have absolutely *no* trouble believing that combat can change a guy...often not for the better.I've been assured of this by a good buddy of mine who was in Khe Sanh during the Tet offensive.IMO any combat vet who's been injured,physically *or* psychologically,should receive all forms of assistance that they,and their families,require.
Completely agree. Not to mention, the diagnosis or self diagnosis of PTSD is thrown around so loosely that it’s lost it’s true meaning.
Completely agree. Not to mention, the diagnosis or self diagnosis of PTSD is thrown around so loosely that it’s lost it’s true meaning.
PTSD can take many forms. I agree that most who return are not dangerous. Those that are usually have some underlying condition that PTSD makes worse
The shooter had PTSD? Hadn’t heard that.
My own father was sent stateside during WWII after being in his 7th plane crash and being the only survivor, my father never hurt anyone and wasn’t even diagnosed as “shell-shocked” as our family doctor was. My medic uncle became an alcoholic but he never harmed anyone. I just think of so many of the men in our small town that I grew up with who had been on the Bataan Death March, they never shot up the town, they were the backbone of our culture.
I know Vietnam veterans, some became alcoholics, one killed himself but so many others became stellar citizens. IMO, it would take one stoic human being to go to war and do and witness the acts of war and not be profoundly changed but they aren’t changed into monsters to be feared.
One profound example was our town drunk, he wasn’t quite like Otis but close. The cops put him in jail when he needed to get cleaned up and fed regularly. He was always walking around town and we all talked to him. Our parents didn’t try to make us afraid of him, he was just like “John with no arms” a part of our community.
It wasn’t till I was an adult that I found out he was a hero and had saved many, many lives on the Death March.
Thanks for your service.
I have never served in a traumatic situation, so I cannot comment on that.
But I admit, it really bothered me back in the Seventies the way they painted every Vietnam Veteran as being damaged goods, unable to control themselves or keep their lives together. I grew to hate that image the media and Hollywood presented, because I knew that even though many good men were traumatized by their combat experiences and managed to forge on in life successfully, there were also good men who had great difficulty dealing with their experiences.
Then, when Gulf War I and II came along, the media and Hollywood portrayals and news coverages of military personnel with PTSD seemed to skyrocket again, but this time, even more so. It brought back all those feelings of anger for me, because it seemed that it was being over-reported.
I have tried to keep in mind that many military people now survive injuries that even as “recent” as the Vietnam era, would have not survived, and that may be part of the apparent increase in presentation to the non-military public, particularly with respect to traumatic brain injuries.
I support the efforts of the medical community to address this in various ways, and I think if a veteran who has seen combat has difficulty coping...there should be readily available and effective help made available to those who need it.
Like you said, and I agree...PTSD is a normal human reaction to traumatic events, and I have always felt that people deal with it differently. Some people deal with it straightforwardly and personally with varying degrees of success. Some deal with it by engaging professionals...also with varying degrees of success. I think much relates to the individual, and there simply isn’t any way of getting around it.
I have heard it occasionally said that more emotionally sensitive people incur a greater amount of psychic “damage” as a result of traumatic situations, and less emotionally sensitive people seem to transit the combat experience in a more “intact” state, but...the more I consider it, the more I feel like I am channeling a psychiatrist, so I am in territory I don’t have any right expressing opinions on.
But I will say this-I dream a lot, and sometimes, it is so realistic and the situations portrayed are so unpleasant, that, even though it may only be a dream for me, it can take a better part of the day or week to shake it completely. Having a fertile imagination, it is unnerving for me to think of having dreams that vivid, based in personal, actual experiences, particularly combat. And the thought of having them repetitively, night after night, year after year, well, that prospect makes me blanch.
When I hear a veteran describe experiencing nightmares (and in my profession, I had some opportunity) it rings all too true. A few years back, I spoke for several hours to someone who had been aboard the USS Indianapolis when she was sunk. He did not discuss the dreams in detail, but simply told me he had them for years.
And some fifty years later, after the event, as he described to me having the dreams, his face turned crimson, and he began to get very emotional and choked up.
Fifty years later.
I told him he didn’t have to discuss it anymore, but he said he wanted to, since he “never talked about them to anyone”.
Honestly, his reaction to only TELLING me about having the nightmares terrified me. I just cannot contemplate it, because I have some idea just how vivid and real dreams can be. I thank God I have never been put in the situation to “find out” how I would deal with it.
As a result, my gratitude to those who have (on my behalf) is genuine and deep.
I don’t know what to make of the seeming epidemic of PTSD, so I am going to generally stay out of that aspect of it since, like combat, it isn’t my place to comment on it. I will leave it to those who know of what they speak.
Rage can also be a symptom of PTSD. It is beyond normal anger, it is your kill or be killed instinct being activated even though you are not actually in a kill or be killed situation.
At Fort Knox we were shown functional MRIs of people with a healthy brain, bi-polar brains, schizophrenia brains and PTSD brains. The areas of the brains light up differently. I’m PTSD sufferers the communication to the basal ganglia (or reptile brain) is supercharged and your pre-frontal cortex which deals with higher brain functions is suppressed. The “reptile brain” only cares about eating, fighting, and surviving(fighting) and it doesn’t matter is the perceived threat, remember reptiles will eat their young.
As a vet with PTSD I have also been surprised by the lack of security at the VA hospitals I’ve been at. The security guard at the outpatient clinic I go to is an older black lady who I could easily overpower and take her weapon if I wanted to. She is not stopping anyone but the oldest vets in there.
The good thing is that from recent statistics I’ve seen Veterans commit fewer homicides than the general population. This is probably due to the discipline we develop in the military. The flip side of that is if we do decide to commit homicide we are much better trained to do it than the general population. Just my two cents on it.
Good post, thanks.
It highly varies. Just because a guy can pick up a rifle and follow some orders does not make them a warrior. I saw a high number of sheep wearing a uniform. Based on my experiences, I’d say 20% are the sheepdogs and the rest thought they could get some adventure and excitement and make some money along the way or get some schooling, but when the bullets start to fly all bets are off. After three tours I can say I had no negative effects, but I’m a Christian. Mileage may vart.
My opinions are not popular, but I’ve lost friends to suicide etc and I can only say knowing them, they weren’t mentally able to comprehend the job.
I have two friends up here I work on. Both of them claim PTSD, but I told them to turn their hearts and burdens to God.
According to Stanton Samenow, Ph.D., an expert in criminal behavior and the author of many books including Inside the Criminal Mind, in a Psychology Today article, he states, “Most military personnel who experience horrendous traumatic events during combat do not come home and kill civilians. In fact, their more likely reaction is to withdraw, become anxious, and become fearful of their surroundings. They are far more likely to become avoidant rather than lash out at others.”
A person is thought to have become violent because he was a victim of violence. Yet someone else experiencing similar trauma does not engage in violent behavior.
rwood
When I was a medical student in 1972-76, there were still whole hospitals full of psychiatric casualties of WW II.
I absolutely agree that most veterans made successful adjustments, one way or another, to civilian life. Those who were in sustained heavy combat less so.
Severe disability from PTSD is not common, but it’s not really rare, either. It certainly wasn’t common if you, to borrow Patton’s famous phrase, spent the war “shoveling shit in Louisiana”, and since 1945 we have not had many men in heavy combat for 50, 60, and 70 days without a break.
I got out in 98 but did four years in Iraq 2004 - 2007. Upon return I figured everything was fine as I settled into my new job. Then I got caught in traffic. To me it was “blocked ambush” and “now I am going to die”. It was pretty bad so I went to an earlier schedule avoiding traffic. It’s gotten better over the years but I still go up when in traffic or especially if I am lost.
That’s my PTSD story. Not enough to report or be seen for. It’s just there and I deal with it. My daughter thinks it’s funny or an eye-roller when she’s in the car with me. Which I guess means it’s ok.
You are so correct that ‘most’ actual in-country vets came back, picked up with their lives and went on. The most public damage for vets came from the fakers. Those vets traded wholesale in selling their phoniness with tall tales, dressing like a rambo throwback and clogging the system with false claim after claim for that magic willy wonka gold 100% disabled 3,000.00 a month free ticket from the taxpayers. Added to that the actually wounded vets and real PTSD sufferers pushed aside because the pressing throng of phonies took over strained VA schedules. I bet more than a few vets have been in VA facilities waiting rooms or PTSD group sessions to listen to the ones that plainly were no where any area or had no exposure to anything PTSD inducing to hear these vaunted heroes rattle on to their avid listeners on what lies to tell to a VA shrink to trigger a PTSD rating. Meanwhile the vets waiting in long lines and lists get pushed further back to get health services. My example was being placed on an 11 month waiting list to get a 35yr old piece of shrapnel removed that was causing problems and ended up getting it done in a non VA facility.