Do wives end up with paying the price for their husbands' service? You bet they do. It isn't just the stress of deployments they are under or the constant worry of the strange car in the driveway, but it is more of a case of basically watching them die inside. The family of a PTSD veteran has to walk on eggshells, never knowing what will set off a situation. Even something as simple as walking up a husband in the middle of a nightmare can produce a black eye or bloody nose if it is not done right. There is constant stress until they begin to heal. By that time, most wives have figured out what works and what doesn't. Now, we can hang onto anger and hurt feelings and allow them to eat away whatever happiness we should have, or we can understand it enough to be able to forgive and find our own kind of normal to live a happier life together.
Keep in mind this does take two to do it. There are many spouses actually being abused, physically and emotionally. If they have no clue what's going on, it is like living in hell. The kids pay the price as well. Emotional roller coasters are not much fun at all for anyone even if there isn't any kind of abuse.
Living with PTSD can be depressing to the point where we don't eat, don't sleep and some will stop doing things they enjoyed. We go to work, hear other wives complain about stupid silly things and we wish we had their problems instead of facing what we will go home to. I remember those darks days well but maybe I'm one of the lucky ones since I knew all along what PTSD was and what it was doing to my husband.
Over the years I've met a lot of other wives with stories worse than what I had been through and many of them ended up having to bury their husband because of suicides no one wanted to talk about at the time. Support was no where to be found for them, so they had to do it on their own. When I say older wives had nothing, consider the Internet was not around until the 90's.
Today a spouse, female or male, has the ability to find a lot of support out there and a means to heal the family.
I went to see a psychologist even knowing what I knew because the stress caused me to actually feel angry. I'm the type of person slow to anger, and if I get angry, I blow then get over it. I was at a point where I couldn't let go of it. I saw a psychologist for several months fully aware of what PTSD was and talking to her because she understood helped me more than anything else could at the time. I strongly suggest that to avoid "secondary PTSD" a spouse needs to find a support group with people knowing what life is like for her/him.
If this turns out to be a story with a twist and it is under-diagnosed as later suggested in this article, then the need to have support for the spouse can no longer be dismissed.
When none of us get the support and help we need to heal from combat, it all goes beyond our front door and will carry on for generations.
Study: Secondary PTSD Overdiagnosed
May 31, 2011
Military.com|by Amy Bushatz
More than half of military spouses who think they are suffering from secondary PTSD symptoms may have been misdiagnosed, a new study finds.
"A lot of times, people see a spouse that's distressed and say it's secondary PTSD," said Keith Renshaw, a psychology professor at George Mason University who authored the study. "There's kind of an over-assumption that this is prevalent, and that anything and everything that comes up for a spouse is due to that."
Secondary post-traumatic stress disorder has become a common catch-all label in the military community for the intense stress many spouses feel while living with a veteran suffering from PTSD. Unlike caretaker stress or stress from traumatic events in their own lives, secondary PTSD has sudden, specific characteristics including vivid dreams about the servicemember's traumatic event or avoiding reminders of that event, Renshaw said.
The study, due for release this fall, found that up to 41 percent of the 190 spouses it surveyed had symptoms similar to those linked with secondary PTSD. But when questioned further, only about 15 percent of respondents pointed to their husbands' military experience as the sole cause for their stress -- a key trait of secondary PTSD.
The popularity of the term "secondary PTSD" may have been caused by the desire among spouses to give a name to the feelings they are experiencing, Renshaw said. But without mental health expertise to sort through their issues, spouses can easily misidentify their symptoms -- a mistake that may lead to improper treatment, he said.
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Secondary PTSD Overdiagnosed
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