How I predicted increase in PTSD in 2001

How I predicted increase in PTSD in 2001
by Chaplain Kathie

This is not so much about my ego as it is about those who taught me. Whatever I know came from learning from the experts and living with it long before September 11.

By 2000, this book was done and I was looking for a publisher. No one wanted it almost as if it was old news. It was not so much about the style of my writing since no publisher ever really read it.For the Love of Jack, His War-My Battle
The day we got married, I married my best friend. His problems after Vietnam were mild and most of what was happening to him I found no problem facing. We knew what PTSD was back then but what no one was warning about was it could get worse.

After all the years between coming home from Vietnam and the day we met, no one helped Jack. His idea was that he would get over it just like his WWII father got over the war he fought. Back then after growing up surrounded by veterans in my own family, I knew there was something very different about Jack, so I began to try to understand him. Clinical books with complicated language, nearly impossible to understand without a dictionary, and graphic news reports in library achieves helped me to understand, so I began to help others learn what I did.

I worked regular jobs as a regular wife, dealing with mild PTSD problems like nightmares and flashbacks, forgetting about going to movies and being picky with where to sit in our favorite restaurant. The times when he was having a bad day and didn't want to go places with me or wanted to leave a family event early. Life wasn't that bad at all. I didn't see the nightmare waiting take over our lives.



I wrote it because over the years there were just too many Vietnam veterans without a clue what was going on inside of them and more wives getting divorced. Wives I met were part of the serial brides Vietnam veterans tried to find peace with.

Living with Jack and helping other veteran families, I had made all the mistakes possible until I found what worked.

The book had already been reviewed by Dr. Jonathan Shay and this wonderful man took the time to try to help me get it published. He did this even though he was working on his second book plus treating veterans at the Boston VA. No one wanted it but I kept trying.

A few days after September 11th, I was on the phone with Dr. Shay. Both of us knew what was coming. I knew I had to get my book out in the public so they would be ready to address PTSD head on. Not just for the survivors but for the Vietnam veterans walking around the country with time bomb of untreated mild PTSD ready to explode. I went the self-published route in 2002. It is online now.

I tried really hard to publicize it but I was not very good at doing it. I didn't want to see another veteran's life fall apart and other wives wonder what just happened when the answers were know and help was available.

Then the troops were being sent into Afghanistan. I began to scream louder about the need to help prevent PTSD from getting worse. I knew we couldn't prevent all cases of PTSD but we could stop it from taking over, just like an infection stops getting worse when it is treated, PTSD stops getting worse as soon as it is addressed.

Then the troops were being sent into Iraq. No one was ready. News report after news report showed how Vietnam veterans were seeking help more and more but the VA was not being geared up for any of it. It was almost as if no one paid attention to after the troops came home. There were less doctors and nurses working for the VA at the time than after the Gulf War. This was a horrifying situation unfolding right in front of my eyes.

I knew none of the news reports I was tracking had to happen. The families just like mine didn't need to fall apart. Veterans like Jack didn't need to suffer without help. None of it had to happen but no one would listen. I had no power. I had no publicity. The wives like me with lasting marriages and stable kids never had a chance to be heard.

I kept helping veterans and their families, but it was, as it still is, private work. The work I do online is taken from news reports or in rare instances, from the veterans wanting their story told, not for sympathy, but to help other veterans.

The reporters want the bad stories. They don't want to know what works or hear about healing. Congress doesn't seem interested in hearing from people like me either.

All of these years we have been provided with everything necessary to address PTSD but too few looked for it. We don't have to see the increase in suicides and attempted suicides. We don't have to see so many families falling apart. We don't have to see military careers end any more than we have to see unemployed veterans due to PTSD. Had we addressed PTSD properly in the first place, as soon as possible, then most of these veteran would be like my Jack was when we met. He had a job and was my best friend. He became a total stranger without help but with it, he's living a life again. We need to stop just looking at what is bad, how much suffering there is out there and begin to see what is possible. If we don't then it will just keep getting worse.

In 2006, the videos I created began to be noticed because there was nothing like them before. I knew I had to try something beyond the pretty bad website I had at the time and move past what I was doing online. None of what I knew was doing enough good if no one was able to find me, hear me and learn. The videos uploaded onto Google and YouTube were spreading knowledge so that none of this seemed impossible to understand.


Now here were are almost 4 years later, all the numbers are up with suicides, attempted suicides, divorce, homelessness and the numbers of families suffering when none of this had to happen.

The reason is simple. If I could figure all of this out years ago, we all need to be wondering why it is the government did not see it coming. How could they not? All they had to do was take the data from Vietnam veterans and begin with that. Me? I had no power then as I have no power now. I had no money then as I have no money now so the powerful will pay no attention to me. Someone I know passed along a very depressing question someone else asked. "If she's any good at what she does, then why does she need help getting the word out? Wouldn't she already have support?" And that's pretty much been the attitude I've run up against all along. The emails I received over the years support that I do know what I'm talking about. Considering the "professionals" using my work across the country, that proves they believe it too. But I am not considered successful my their measurements. They measure success by fame. I measure by the lives I've helped to heal and yes, too often saved. They measure success by the size of the bank account and ability to pay publicists. I measure it when I have a family now able to understand enough that they try to help their family member heal instead of walk away from them.

The veterans and their families needing help cannot afford to donate. They are lucky if they can put food on the table. The publicity I could receive would only come by violating the trust they have in me and my promise to them is that they would never read their stories on a blog unless that was what they wanted. This is why I need support financially and by people passing my work along to help as many people as possible. The powerful won't listen to me or anyone else like me out there before even I was.

If you need proof of this then consider someone as brilliant as Dr. Shay. Have you seen him during any of the interviews when they are talking about PTSD? No. Not only did Dr. Shay treat the veterans at the Boston VA, he wrote two books on it. He received a Genius Award for his work but you will not hear anyone asking him what he thinks. He saw all of this coming too but even he couldn't get anyone to listen. The chances of me getting the attention of anyone is pretty slim knowing this. Imagine what could have happened if people had listened before any of this happened. We couldn't have prevented all of it but there is no way in hell it had to have gotten this bad.

This all goes into why I became a Chaplain. The International Fellowship of Chaplains was willing to take my years of experience and spiritual gifts in place of a degree from a seminary. They only cared about my desire to help others. The training I received was in order to head off what I was seeing when traumatic events are allowed to take control over the person. I've seen too much suffering on the other side. None of what we've been seeing has to happen and the IFOC chaplains know this. I am a Senior Chaplain with the IFOC because their eyes are open wide. They support the work I do when few other organizations were interested in helping at all and others were more interested in using my work without offering any support to me at all. The IFOC knows that God calls us to do what we do just as I am sure God called me to help veterans the day I met my husband. Had I not met him, I would have been spending my time on my own life just like everyone else instead of knowing how much the veterans were suffering.

The numbers were in for the most part from the Vietnam war. By 1978 there were 500,000 PTSD Vietnam veterans but above that number came a warning the numbers would go higher and they did. The suicides, incarcerations, divorces and homelessness numbers were known by the time September 11th came. The condition of mild PTSD was known and it was also known a secondary stressor would kick mild PTSD into high gear. It was also known that as soon as veterans began to seek help for PTSD, it stopped getting worse for them. All we see today in prevention in the civilian population came as a result of the Vietnam veterans forcing research into PTSD.

None of what we are seeing needed to happen and could have been prevented if the military took the same steps ahead of time as the IFOC chaplains did. Addressing the need where the need is goes a long way in preventing PTSD from being allowed to eat away at the emotional/spiritual life of the survivors after traumatic events. PTSD is a wound that can infect the entire person. Intervention is the antibiotic.

So when you hear about the suffering of so many of our troops and veterans, know this, none of this was not predicted ahead of time. All they had to do was open their eyes to what was already known.