Families also suffer from effects PTSD

Families also suffer from effects PTSD

by
Hope Hodge
Editor’s note: This is the first in a two-part series looking at how PTSD affects families.

Coping with symptoms of post-traumatic stress is a fact of life for many who return from combat tours, and helping troops become mentally and physically healthy has become an increasingly consuming task for military and civilian physicians in Jacksonville.

But the effects of traumatic events overseas do not end with those closest to the incident.

A Jacksonville Marine wife, a “veteran” of more than 10 of her husband’s deployments, told a seminar audience that she would change her routine drastically while he was away, spending her days by the telephone, watching CNN 12 hours a day.

Another woman whose son, a Camp Lejeune Marine, completed three combat deployments and returned home with traumatic brain injuries from a humvee explosion, PTSD and self-medicating substance abuse, said anxiety over her son’s condition would make her physically ill.

“When my son was going through a lot of issues, and the phone would ring, and I would look down and see it was him, I would literally get nauseous,” she said. “I’ve had to redefine the way I interact with him.”

While data on the effects of combat stress response on military families is hard to come by, it’s something that military officials are asking about.

In May, Defense Department officials sent online surveys to 100,000 military spouses and 40,000 married active-duty service members asking them about the effects of coping with multiple deployments and other facts of military life in the interest of improving services available to spouses and families.

Camp Lejeune Naval Hospital’s director of Mental Health, Cmdr. Robert O’Byrne, said stories such as those of the wife and mother above — who asked to not be identified — are “regretfully common.”
Families also suffer from effects PTSD