NAMI provides support to those facing PTSD

Group aids troops with combat stress
NAMI provides support to those facing PTSD
BY LILY GORDON - lgordon@ledger-enquirer.com --

Kenneth McDonald was 17 when he joined the Army in 1968. After completing basic training at Fort Benning, he was deployed to the jungles of Thailand where his duties included loading the bodies of dead American soldiers onto airplanes to be transported home.

It was there in the hot, isolated jungle that McDonald says his troubles began.

After two years of active duty service, McDonald was stressed, depressed and worn. In 1971, he left the Army and enrolled in trade school. He was having a hard time adjusting to civilian life, however, and six months later McDonald dropped out of school and went to work at Fort Benning as a mechanic. When he was laid off from that job, he launched a landscaping business, then a catering and florist company, then a small antiques business. Nothing seemed to hold his attention and he spiralled deeper into depression.

It wasn't until 1990, more than two decades later, that a doctor told McDonald he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, schizo-affective disorder and bipolar disorder.

Help available

Some 40,000 troops have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder since 2003, according to Pentagon statistics released in May. It's a growing problem among veterans returning from tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and one that is just beginning to get the attention it deserves, said Sue Marlowe, director of the Columbus chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Combatting the stigma surrounding the disease is ostensibly more challenging than treating it, especially when soldiers are the ones effected.
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