What Doctors Get Wrong about PTSD? The rest of us.

by
Chaplain Kathie

I began to read this on Scientific America but stopped right after the first page. To give you an idea why, all you have to do is look at the title in the link to see what it must have had at the original title.

Soldiers' Stress: What Doctors Get Wrong about PTSD
A growing number of experts insist that the concept of post-traumatic stress disorder is itself disordered and that soldiers are suffering as a result
By David Dobbs

Post Traumatic Stress Trap

There are several pages on this article but I didn't feel any need to waste my time after I read the part about PTSD and 31%, which can be argued but basically the consensus is a rate of one out of three. This however does not take into account what the Army study found. That study showed an increase risk of PTSD by 50% for each redeployment. Considering many of the soldiers and Marines are on their 3rd, 4th, 5th tour or more, it's easy to see why the rates are so high. One of our friend's son is on his 5th tour at the age of 21. As the son of a Vietnam veteran, he has a lot better chance of getting help for PTSD than others do, simply because his father is well aware of what it is and the price that is paid long after the risk in combat ends.

One of the other factors in more seeking help is communication. The web has stepped up to the challenge of spreading the word about what they've known was wrong with them and put a title on it, a label they can use to explain what's going on inside of them as well as gain support from others. We have a long way to go when I address Vietnam veterans and some of them still have yet to hear the word, PTSD or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but we're getting there.

Another great factor is the troops themselves. They navigate the web as if it's always been a part of their lives simply because it has. Unlike the Vietnam veterans and their families, they were lucky to pick up a newspaper so it was easier to hide the suffering of hundreds of thousands of them. They also have MTV. While MTV was about the music they listen to, MTV has risen to the need of their viewers and took on PTSD as in a way the national media should have done, with all seriousness and normality. They allow veterans to feel that what is wrong with them is normal considering where they were and what they endured. They find others sharing the same kind of wound and link them to a world where they are all related, even to others their age that never deployed into Iraq or Afghanistan.

Post Traumatic Stress Trap? It's about time we had one to keep them from falling into the abyss.

I've known too many Vietnam veterans still fighting for their lives and still trying to have their clams approved. I lost one of them in March right after she had a hearing for her claim to be honored. Capt. Agnes Bresnahan, known as Irish, went to Washington for yet another hearing and passed away there. She lived in New Hampshire and dealt with trying to get the VA to compensate her equal to her suffering from Agent Orange and PTSD, but she also fought for other veterans day in and day out. Irish never stopped fighting for the country she loved or her brothers and sisters. We've lost too many of like her. It still grieves me she passed away without seeing justice for herself. Now I read something like this article.

I live this everyday. 70 hours a week, I read their stories and emails, share their heartache and try to help them in whatever way I can. I also live with it 24/7 with my own husband. I know what he was like when PTSD was mild in him and long for the day when it was still wondering what could have been done differently so that his wound would not have been driven so far into his soul that most of what he was is forever gone. Don't get me wrong. It's not hopeless. With treatment and medication, he is doing a lot better, but had he received the help he needed when he came home, I doubt he would be still in therapy and on medications as much as he is. Our marriage only survived because I knew what this was all along, so I'm not kidding myself into thinking that love alone got us to this 25th year of our marriage. It took knowledge to keep me from walking away, from reacting the wrong way to things he did and said and to allow me to keep forgiving him when he was at his worst.

When I talk to the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, their families and their parents, I see all the Vietnam veterans coming back without a clue to a nation oblivious to their wounds. I see the magnificence of their strength and courage taking on the government to have this human wound treated and compensated for, not just for them, but for all generations of veterans, including the older veterans unwilling to speak out about this ancient wound of war. I see the families destroyed by untreated PTSD and the children growing up blaming themselves for the way their fathers acted, hating them at the same time they wonder what was wrong with them. I see their children reaching adulthood with secondary PTSD because of the trauma they grew up with and wonder what will ever be done for the child within them that never healed.

Wives and husbands weep when their warriors come home and they feel helpless as they watch their lives fall apart. Parents wonder what ever happened to the child they raised and children wonder what happened to their Mom or Dad to make them so sad. This is not just a military issue, this is an issue that should be taken more seriously than any other marital crisis because it destroys families.

While walks for causes like breast cancer are worthy and vital to raise the awareness and save lives, there should be walks for PTSD because it would not only raise the awareness, it would save families by removing the stigma, providing knowledge an save lives because they would seek help with the support from their communities. We are too far away from that because there are not enough people working on PTSD to go around. To this day, people ask me what I do and when I tell them they respond with "What's that?" as if they never pick up a newspaper.

The only way we will get to where we need to be is if the media, the national media, takes this just as seriously as any other crisis. We all saw the kind of reporting they did with Katrina, but this strikes far more lives and generations and is the direct responsibility of the government. We saw what they did with covering the presidential campaign with round the clock coverage for over a year, so we know they can do it when they want to. We also remember what they managed to do when the Towers were hit in New York, yet so many more lives are lost because of the brutality of war and the ambivalence of the American people. Could you imagine the outrage if they only covered 9-11 for a few hours and went on to report something else right after the tower fell? So why do we tolerate it when they stopped covering the military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq? Why do we tolerate it when they can't even mention how many lives have been lost in both of them or how many wounded come home needing help? We tolerate it because the men and women serving this nation are a minority and so are our veterans. We tolerate it when people decide to slam all the advances done in proving knowledge the veterans and the troops need when it comes to PTSD by saying it's not because of better communication, but because it's been blown out of proportions. The problem with so many needing help for PTSD is not there are already so many. The problem is we have yet to come to terms with any of this and this, horrific as it is, is just the beginning. We won't see the end to the increase in numbers until 30 years after the last troops come home. Think I'm wrong? We're still seeing veterans from Vietnam and Korea seeking help for the first time. This is just the start of what we will see and we need to take it as seriously as the media just took the new dog the Obama family just got.

As for what doctors really get wrong about PTSD is that it is not something wrong with them, it's us.