The difference now is we know what to do living with PTSD

If the conference in Boston produced only one thing, this is it.

“We have good days and we have bad days,’’ she said. “The difference now is we know what to do.’’ Sheri Hall

Her husband served two tours in Iraq as a Major. He was worried about his career and what seeking help would do to it, so he avoided going to a psychiatrist. His wife made sure he did. She didn't just stand by him. She stood up for him when he needed help.

For too many wives they fail at doing their duty. That is exactly what it is when they are married to veterans of combat.

It is hard on families when they get deployed but it should never be harder when they come back home. During deployment, families say they have enough to worry about and they use this as an excuse to not become informed about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Some are under the delusion that after a first tour, the return went well, so all other wills. What they are unwilling to understand is that more they are exposed to traumatic events in combat, the higher the risk of PTSD setting in.

If they are aware of the signs of PTSD, they know what they are seeing and they are the first to see the changes. Without knowledge, they don't have a clue what is behind the changes. Families can make coming home worse or families can save their lives. The choice is ours. They learn how to fight, but it is our duty to help them learn how to live after.

Boston conference focuses on military suicide prevention
VA reaches out via social media

Associated Press / March 16, 2011

Army Major Ed Pulido knows what it’s like to feel the despair that comes with losing a limb and knowing his military career was over.

Pulido, who had a traumatic brain injury and lost his left leg after his vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb in Iraq, would lie in bed and wonder when the night terrors would end, how he would support his family, and whether he would ever feel like himself again.

Pulido’s mother sought help for him, and now he is seeking help for others like him.

The retired serviceman is speaking to veterans this week at the third annual suicide prevention conference sponsored by the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The conference, called “All the Way Home,’’ is focusing on finding ways to prevent military suicides by removing the stigma of seeking mental health counseling and mustering stronger support throughout the community.
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Boston conference focuses on military suicide prevention

Do I sound angry? I am. Back when I met my husband, he had been home for 11 years and no one helped him. No one understood what Vietnam was doing to him. There was nothing available for anyone to learn from. The Internet did not really start up until the 90's so the support and the lifeline depended on finding other veterans. Most of their families didn't know what any of this was about. There was no support for me or my family.

My own family said I needed to get a divorce because what I was learning from clinical books was nearly impossible to explain to them. The news didn't cover any of it unless a Vietnam veteran was arrested but families like mine were still falling apart and too many had to bury their veteran because of suicide. We'd read the obituary of a veteran, see the words "died suddenly" and then the whispers would start that it was suicide. Families were left to wonder what they could have done to have their veteran live on and they eventually blamed themselves.

I knew what PTSD was early on and I understood why he acted the way he did but even understanding it did not make it easy. It was hard. As hard as it was knowing it, it made me more aware of how impossible it was to stay on wives without a clue. They had absolutely no tools to help them help their husbands.

Back then they had excuses that were real. Now no family has any excuse other than not wanting to know.

PTSD and suicides are all over the Internet. I know because I track them across the country and you've read most of the reports here. Brave families come forward and talk about what happened. They join groups online to support others. Veterans have been telling their own stories to help other veterans. They know what it is like to have PTSD but more, they want to share what it is like to survive it and heal. Wives want to make it easier for others to understand what it took them years to learn so the newer wives won't have to waste time searching instead of finding the answers.

The job of the families is to do all they can for the veteran but the time to look only at the military the VA for exclusive blame ended a long time ago. While they have been falling down on the job of doing all that is possible to help the veterans, the families share blame when they refused to learn.

Stunned by the response from too many younger wives telling me "I have enough to worry about when he's deployed so I don't want to worry about what may not happen." it made me wonder what wives like me would have given back in the 80's for a tenth of this support to have been there. Friends of mine have been married for 20, 30 and 40 years because they cared enough to make mistakes and learn from them. While half of average marriages end in divorce, these marriages survived with PTSD because the spouse was committed to the veteran and the veteran was committed to their spouse. We tried, made mistakes and learned from them so that our lives would be better and our families would be stronger.

Can we save all of them? No, sadly no, we can't. There were a lot of suicides even with knowing what PTSD was. It happened in my own family with the suicide of my husband's nephew. Everyone including his girlfriend, a psychologist, did all we could but we couldn't heal his pain enough. While we may always wonder what else we could have done, at least we know we did the best we could with the knowledge we had. We can save a lot more of them than we are now and we can save a lot more families from falling apart.

The choice is either this fight is worth it or it isn't. Do we love them enough to learn or don't we? Do we feel they are worth the time to learn what we need to do to help them or don't we? Sheri Hall made the choice to learn so that she could help her husband. What if she didn't?