Band of sisters: PTSD

Band of sisters: PTSD
Posted: 04:40 PM ET

By Lindy Hall
Senior Producer

Women are joining the military in record numbers. Of the 1.8 million troops that have been deployed in the Iraq–Afghanistan conflict, 200 thousand of them are women. 120 of them have died, over 600 have been wounded. But hundreds more have come home with wounds that are harder to see. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, “is best thought of as a disorder of recovery,” says Dr. Natara Garovoy who runs the Women’s Mental Health Clinic at the Veteran’s Administration in Palo Alto, California, and women are twice as likely as men to suffer from it. She says that when “someone experiences something traumatic, basically life threatening in some way” that event can really stay with them and make sleeping, socializing and working difficult. “Lives are lost, relationships are damaged-people have a hard time working…they drop out of school and they start to isolate…the very life they were hoping to lead kind of disappears,” she adds.


Women are facing a lot of “unique stressors”. Often they are the only women in their unit, many of them are mothers and many of those are single mothers. “As primary caregivers…being deployed and still having that responsibility” is unique to them, Garovoy says.

She also adds that “One traumatic event is enough…but the more trauma exposures you have, the more likely you are to suffer from PTSD.” And even though women aren’t technically in combat roles because they aren’t actually on the “front lines”, women are putting their lives on the line every day, but it is frustrating and stressful to many women who don’t feel they are recognized for their contributions. Corporal Shiloh Morrison is 24 years old and is a reservist in the U.S. Marine Corps. She says she is frustrated when people infer that, just because you’re a woman, you wouldn’t have been in combat.

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Band of sisters PTSDlinked from ICasualties.org