Why overlook the obvious with PTSD rates?

Kevin Horrigan: Two wars, too many victims
By Kevin Horrigan -
Published 12:00 am PST Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Last week, in a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a panel of U.S. Army psychiatrists reported that one in every five active-duty soldiers has developed mental health problems after coming home from Iraq.
The problems range from post-traumatic stress disorder to depression to substance abuse to anger outbursts that create family conflict. The toll may be even higher than 20 percent, because 42 percent of returning National Guard and reserve troops reported similar problems. The authors speculate that Guard and reserve troops may be more open about their problems because they want to make sure that they continue to get health care coverage once their deployments have ended.
As it happens, I read about this study at the same time I was finishing Rick Atkinson's "The Day of Battle," his new history of the war in Sicily and Italy in 1943 and 1944. It's the second volume of his history of World War II in North Africa and Europe. Part 1, "An Army at Dawn," won a Pulitzer Prize in 2003.

go here for the rest

http://www.sacbee.com/110/story/506601.html

Don't get me wrong, this is a great piece and well worth the read. It's just that it consistently boggles my brain how so many can keep missing the obvious. It is not just that PTSD rates are high,but the death count is low. The wound to death ratio is 7-1. Most of the soldiers surviving would have died in all past wars, including Vietnam, Korea, WWI, WWII along with every other war. Go back and read the history of war. You need to begin when man first started to report the outcomes. What you will find is that while civilizations evolve, technology improves, humans are still in fact human. Our basic makeup has not changed much at all. We are all still just human.

The PTSD numbers were lower throughout history but so were the survival rates. This generation did not invent PTSD but because of medical procedures and advances, we inadvertently let the genie out of the bottle. It is not that wars have gotten more gruesome or horrific with the technology allowing combatants to strike from great distances instead of hand to hand combat only. As a matter of fact, they are tame to how they used to have to win battles. They would be face to face with the enemy and killing them an arms length away. Survivors would have to walk around and over bodies after. Today they have to come up on the bodies bombs and long range bullets killed. These same bombs also have a habit of blowing pieces of humans all over the place. It is less horrific to do the battle but it may just be more horrific to observe the aftermath.

It seems to be irrational to not notice the fact that as survivors of the conflict rise they will see even more suffering the wounds of war. We also have to consider that the redeployments raise the risk of developing PTSD by 50%. Knowing there are more to come because of the history of PTSD, it will take years for the symptoms to surface, it is surprising there are not more than reported thus far.