Should Military Consider PTSD Worth a Purple Heart?

Bullets rip through skin. Bombs cut off limbs. These wounds, wounds producing loss of blood are obvious. They can be seen. The wounded are cared for because everyone understands this human body was just hurt. Yet when because bullets ripped through skin and bombs blew up friends, no one seems to be willing to allow the same kind of understanding that this body was hurt as well.

After all, isn't the mind part of the body? While we understand that a solider losing his legs will usually require mental health help, we cannot bring ourselves to understand that this one wound can, and usually does, lead to another wound.

While it is understandable some will argue against the Purple Heart being awarded for unseen wounds like PTSD and TBI, there can be no argument these wounds were caused by service as well as physical wounds. If a brain bleeds because head trauma caused it, do they get a Purple Heart? What is wrong with acknowledging the wound when the soul bleeds? What is wrong when the concussion force wounds the brain just as it wounds the body?

Military May Consider PTSD Worth a Purple Heart

With an increasing number of troops being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, the military might consider awarding one of the nation's top military citations to veterans with psychological wounds and not just physical ones.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates offered cautious support for such a change on a trip to a military base in Texas this month. "It's an interesting idea," Mr. Gates said in response to a question. "I think it is clearly something that needs to be looked at."

The Pentagon says it isn't formally considering a change in policy at this point, but Mr. Gates's comments sparked a heated debate which says, can psychological traumas, no matter how debilitating, be considered equivalent to dismembering physical wounds?

Supporters of awarding the Purple Heart to veterans with PTSD believe the move would reduce the stigma that surrounds the disorder and spur more soldiers and Marines to seek help without fear of limiting their careers.

"These guys have paid at least as high a price, some of them, as anybody with a traumatic brain injury, as anybody with a shrapnel wound," John Fortunato, who runs a military PTSD treatment facility in Texas, told reporters recently. Absent a policy change, Dr. Fortunato told reporters, troops will mistakenly believe that PTSD is a "wound that isn't worthy."

Military historians believe that the syndrome now known as PTSD -- usually characterized by nightmares, sleeplessness and anxiety and for some, eventually suicide. Vets lose marriages over PTSD, become addicted to drugs and alcohol, suffer from depression, and some eventually take their own lives due to the torment.

Today, PTSD is emerging as one of the signature problems of the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which lack clear front lines and pit U.S. forces against enemies who operate out of densely packed civilian areas.
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Military May Consider PTSD Worth a Purple Heart