PTSD Awareness Day:More soldiers seeking help for PTSD

by
Chaplain Kathie

This is PTSD Awareness Day. This is also post number 12,000! While I had high hopes this day would come there were many times I thought that nothing would do any good. How is a person supposed to find hope with reports of suicides and attempted suicides going up all the time? How does anyone find hope after reading about Marine Clay Hunt's suicide not counted after he did everything that experts said had to be done in order to save their lives? Too many reports over the years and I've been reading them for almost 30 years now. While this blog is less than 4 years old, I began in 1982 when PTSD became part of my life. I fell in love with a Vietnam Veteran. Hard to believe after all we've been through, we're still in love, still married, but above all that, he's living a better life. With therapy and medication, he finally reached the point where he is unashamed of what Vietnam did to him. Knowing that all is not hopeless because I have seen it with my own eyes has been torture, grieving for families suffering the loss of someone they loved. The worst emails I receive are from families when it is too late to help their veteran heal.

Defeating the stigma of PTSD is step one in overcoming it. Knowing what it is and what it is doing to their lives helps them understand they are not "defective" or "crazy" or anything else but a person who cared enough to risk his/her life for the sake of someone else. Brave? You bet or they wouldn't have been able to do anything more than sit it out like the majority of the people in this country. Beyond the bravery is compassion. They cared deeply about other people and that opened the door to the pain they came home with.

After reading the following report, it seems as if the enemy called "stigma" is losing this battle for their lives and that's a wonderful thing.

More Lewis-McChord soldiers seeking mental help
Officials at Joint Base Lewis-McChord believe they're making progress against the stigma that keeps some soldiers from getting help for mental-health issues.

By The Associated Press

JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD — Officials at Joint Base Lewis-McChord believe they're making progress against the stigma that keeps some soldiers from getting help for mental-health issues.

More soldiers and military families are reaching out for mental-health care at the base, and post-traumatic stress diagnoses and prescriptions for common antidepressants are on the rise at Madigan Army Medical Center, The News Tribune of Tacoma reported.

What's not clear is how much of that increased pace is the result of distress caused by combat and long separations, and how much is the result of the sheer numbers of soldiers returning to the base from overseas. More than half of the base's 40,000 service members were gone from mid-2009 to mid-2010.

"I think we're actually starting to win this battle on stigma," said Madigan's commander, Col. Dallas Homas.
More Lewis-McChord soldiers seeking mental help