Edinburgh veteran says ""I'd rather have had an arm or a leg blown off," than have PTSD

"I'd rather have had an arm or a leg blown off," he says. "At least people could see that injury. When it comes to mental injuries, they can't. But there's nothing worse than losing your mind."

This must have been said hundreds of thousands of times from Scotland to England, from Australia to Canada, from the Philippines to Philadelphia and all across this nation. Generation to generation in hushed tones as if it were some deep, dark secret that needed to be kept. "Let them think anything they want as long as they don't think I'm crazy" I've heard at least a thousand times. They would rather be thought of as a drunk or a drug addict as long as people saw them as tough, able to take on anything, able to take on anyone. The problem is they can't take on themselves. They can't take on what they brought back from war embedded deep within their souls.

One of the veterans I met when I first started doing this was a Vietnam vet. He didn't drink because he didn't want people to think he was a drunk. He smoked pot instead. He said he didn't want to punch anyone out and the pot kept him calm, "mellowed out" as he put it. He couldn't get through a day without it. Little by little all the signs of PTSD were there but not being able to diagnose him, I had to talk him into seeing a psychologist but first I had to get through to him. He had all the excuses they all use. Until it all began to sink in, nothing was going to convince him that he needed help.

Three divorces didn't give him a clue. It was his wives who were to blame. No contact with his family at all didn't open his eyes. After all, they were never very close anyway. Not being able to keep a job was always someone else's fault.

He didn't get the message until he went to yet another funeral for another Vietnam vet who had committed suicide.

Pretty much, he use the same way to describe what the diagnosis meant to him. He thought he was "nuts" and no one would want anything to do with him. What he eventually found was the more he talked about it, the more friends he had with the same problem. All they years of trying to self medicate to cope were lost years as he thought he was the only one and so did his friends. All the lost years of trying to keep it all inside afraid to let it out left out a lot of people who did in fact care about him and were going through the same thing. They could have been leaning on each other instead of hiding from each other.

The times have not changed enough to get the notion of this being anything to be ashamed of out of their brains. There is no shame in feeling. People who can feel, are sensitive to what others feel can come to times in their lives when all the pain they carry and see others carry begins to eat away at them. Feeling is not something to be ashamed of. Being wounded is nothing to be ashamed of. What there is to be ashamed of is that they still don't feel as if they can open up and admit they need help, they need their friends to lean on and they need someone to help them fight this battle the same way they needed someone to help them battle the enemy they were sent to fight. They didn't do that alone and this enemy requires an army to attack it head on with just as much behind it. This does not know nation. It does not know race. It only knows a human went through trauma and that's all it takes. Is there anything more traumatic than combat? So where is the military in the plans to overtake this enemy?
Jail instead of treatment? Dishonorable discharges for honorable wounded warriors? Claims turned down instead of being approved by the same government who trained, armed and prepared them to go to war? Refusal of admission of responsibility? Would be nice if the governments who send them was equally prepared to take care of them after.


Senior Chaplain Kathie Costos
Namguardianangel@aol.com
http://www.namguardianangel.org/
http://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

Lost hearts and minds
Edinburgh,Scotland
Published Date: 31 August 2008
By Peter Ross
GAVIN BARCLAY, a 37-year-old former soldier with the horrors and terrors of Iraq clanking around inside his head like a bagful of bad pennies, marches up the mountain known as the Cobbler, untroubled by the gradient and indifferent to the scenery.

Not so long ago, when he was a lance corporal in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, he'd train by marching for miles through landscape like this while carrying 25kg of kit. He used to say the only way he would stop was if he dropped down dead, and that relentlessness remains. Barclay just keeps walking and talking, never stopping to glance behind him at Loch Long, the village of Arrochar or the train speeding towards Oban. Yet in another sense, all this man does is look back.

"I'd rather have had an arm or a leg blown off," he says. "At least people could see that injury. When it comes to mental injuries, they can't. But there's nothing worse than losing your mind."

Barclay, who lives in Dalmuir, has post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a psychological condition caused by his experiences of combat. He is one of thousands of ex-servicemen and women in the UK who suffer from it, and numbers are increasing all the time as a result of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the unique pressures these have put on the military. The threat of roadside bombs and suicide bombers mean soldiers feel under threat constantly. Experts believe it's more challenging psychologically than traditional battles, in which opposing forces lined up against each other. There is also the added pressure of the army being undermanned and overstretched, leading to less time off between deployments than is healthy.
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