Spouses are often the first to notice effects of PTSD

Spouses are often the first to notice effects of PTSD

Posted: October 10, 2011
By Timothy J. Gibbons
Three days into Tony’s tour as a guard at a detention facility in Iraq, the first mortar attack came.

Pulling on every piece of protective equipment he could find, Tony rushed to a bunker. Inside: two soldiers, in shorts and helmets, shrugging off the entire thing. Outside: an airman sat playing a guitar, oblivious to his surroundings.

“It was surreal,” Tony said.

He got to talk to his wife a few days later, but communication system problems cut the conversations short.

“He never got to tell me what happened,” said his wife, Michelle. “I’m glad he didn’t.”

Michelle still hasn’t heard about some of Tony’s experiences, things she can’t understand for want of having lived through them.

That’s a common refrain from the spouses of those with post-traumatic stress disorder, who have to deal with the aftermath of a situation utterly alien to most of their lives in addition to the normal relationship stresses of being apart for months or a year.

The Times-Union is not using last names at the subjects’ request, to protect their privacy.

Wives are often the ones who notice symptoms, said Ken Harwood, a civilian psychologist who oversees several therapy groups at Jacksonville Navy Hospital, including the one Tony is in.

“They immediately see he’s different,” he said about wives welcoming husbands back, “[he’s] highly irritable, numb, isolating himself in his room.

“They feel they just got their man back, and he’s broken.”

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