The troops need to be able to talk about this instead of just pushing it back in their minds. If they do not deal with what they experienced, they will only add to it the next time they go through something horrific and once again repeat it with silence and shock.
I was having lunch with a friend today and we were talking about a report she heard on NPR.
Dealing with Post Traumatic Stress After War
March 20, 2008 · Many active duty soldiers and veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan return home with nightmares, flashbacks, and emotional hypersensitivity. Some of them are diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
News & Notes , March 20, 2008 · Many active duty soldiers and veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan return home with nightmares, flashbacks, and emotional hypersensitivity. Some of them are diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Farai Chideya talks with June Moss, who served in Iraq in 2003 and was released from the Army two years later on early medical retirement due to her PTSD.
We also hear from Dr. Robert Jenkins, an attending psychologist at the Men's Trauma Recovery Program at the National Center for PTSD in Menlo Park's Department of Veteran Affairs Division.
When they are heading home, the family wants them home as soon as possible, but what they do not understand is the rush to get back together is not the best thing that can happen sometimes.
One of the biggest things you'll hear Vietnam veterans say is that one day they were in Vietnam and the next day they were home. Home and expected to eat at the dinner table, take a shower in privacy, plop down in the chair with the TV remote in hand and just get back to normal. Some will have parties given in their honor so that family and friends can welcome them home and give them a hug, but even they expect the veteran to be right back to the way they were before they left. Someone in the group will be looking for signs that they are not the same. They do not do this in a proactive way in order to help, but in a way that will enable them to use the change as a way to cause harm. There is one jerk in every group and usually a couple within some families.
The WWII generation came home the slow way. They went on ships and were able to adapt to what they were going to face, talking to others about their fears and their human emotions. They returned the same way, slowly, again on ships and sharing what they had just been through. WWII, as with all other wars had delivered many with the extra wound of PTSD but it is thought the ability to debrief with others who had experienced the same traumas, compare them and address them aided in the recovery. In other words, no one had a chance to just push it all into the back of their minds. It could have helped but it may have had more to do with the fact that psychological problems were "stuffed" back in the brain and most people just didn't talk about any of it. When they did talk about it, it didn't make the news but was kept as a closely guarded secret.
Talk to children of WWII veterans and you will usually hear the same story. "My father drank too much." "My father never talked about anything." "He never cared what I did." All along those lines and what was at the bottom of it was the war brought home in their mind. It happened in the generations before that and after that. Korean War veterans kept their minds closely guarded as well but many of them said they thought that was what they were supposed to do because they used the WWII veterans as an example.
When Vietnam veterans came back they were alone.
Now we have them coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan on jets and right back home within days from combat. They come home with their units but they do not use this time to rehash what happened. They use it to talk about what they will do when they get home. They should be sharing what they are bringing back with them before they get home.
Once people talk about what is going on inside of them, they stop PTSD from getting worse. Like an infection, it stops spreading once it is treated. Even just talking about what happened helps to treat PTSD. Many will need the help of a psychologist and a psychiatrist to issue medication but the talking about it with people they trust helps and it especially helps when you know the person they are talking to walked in the same shoes.
As we deal with the emergency responders right here in this country taking care of the rest of us, we need to stop ignoring the troops who need the same kind of attention. We need to begin to debrief them as soon as possible or we will allow the wound to spread.
Chaplain Kathie Costos
Namguardianangel@aol.com
www.Namguardianangel.org
www.Namguardianangel.blogspot.com
www.Woundedtimes.blogspot.com
"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation."
- George Washington
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