Tornado survivors PTSD needs to be studied by military

While I refuse to call anyone a victim of a traumatic event instead of survivor, this study needs to be read over and over again by the military.

The rate for developing PTSD is “well over 50 percent for the victims,” Casey said. “For the workers, it will be somewhere between 10 and 30 percent.”

A tornado may only hit a town once but after that, the fear of another one coming can cause them to live in fear for the rest of their lives. For responders, they were not in there when the tornado hit but came after the damage was already done. Yet for them, the damage penetrates their minds as well.

Responders are trained to help survivors and other responders. Chaplains (like me) go through all kinds of different programs to be able to train ourselves to think beyond "self" so that we can take are of other people. It's just what we do. The problem comes when we've just seen too much to be able to just move onto the next crisis. While I believe our training helps us to recover a bit better than others, this does not stop us from experiencing what every other human does.

Two things stand out in this report. One traumatic event like a tornado can change lives forever, yet with the military, more often than not, they face one traumatic event after another and another. That fear of death, wounding or losing someone else they care about hangs on them. The other factor is that civilians have someone showing up after one event to help them put their lives back together but for the military, there is little done to help them recover from all they experience.

You'd think with all the exposures to combat situations, they would have developed a way to have someone there to debrief them all the time, but due to a shortage of mental health professionals and Chaplains, this isn't happening enough to get ahead of any of what we're seeing coming out of repeated deployments into Iraq and Afghansitan.

More than half of tornado victims may have PTSD
Two groups of people are likely to develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder from the June 17 tornado: directly affected Wadena area residents and the indirectly affected volunteers and workers helping them, according to Jim Kraemer of the Neighborhood Counseling Center and Dr. Dan Casey of Green Cross Academy of Traumatology.
By: Rachelle Klemme , Wadena (Minn.) Pioneer Journal
WADENA, Minn. — Two groups of people are likely to develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder from the June 17 tornado: directly affected Wadena area residents and the indirectly affected volunteers and workers helping them, according to Jim Kraemer of the Neighborhood Counseling Center and Dr. Dan Casey of Green Cross Academy of Traumatology.

“(PTSD) can be caused by anything that would be traumatic in a person’s life,” said Kraemer.

Casey and Kraemer said symptoms of PTSD include difficulty sleeping, changes in appetite (hardly eating, not eating at all or overeating), anxiety and flashbacks replaying the traumatic event in one’s mind.

The multiple July storms have not helped.

Casey also said people living with or without PTSD may overreact to severe weather — for example, taking shelter in the basement without an actual tornado warning.

Acute Distress Response occurs immediately after an event. After 30 days, it can be diagnosed as PTSD, Casey said.

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More than half of tornado victims may have PTSD