Are Vietnam veterans too old to heal?

Are Vietnam veterans too old to heal?
by
Chaplain Kathie

I get this question a lot. There was a time when I thought it may be true but life told a totally different story.

After watching my husband get worse on a daily basis it was hard to hope for better days. He refused to go to the VA. When my Dad, a Korean War veteran, met him, he said "He's a nice guy but he's got shell shock," I figured I could handle the symptoms that went with him. I had no clue it would get worse. So many years after Vietnam, I thought "what you see is what you get" and I was fine with that. Then I began to wonder what my Dad was talking about. Why was this man I loved so different from all the veterans I grew up with? My Dad, my uncles were WWII veterans and I had a cousin that was a Vietnam vet. What was all of this about?

That's when I started to study the Vietnam War and discovered the term Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It was 1982.

The longer PTSD goes untreated the more damage is done but it is never, ever, hopeless to heal. When PTSD is considered mild, most of the issues going along with combat trauma is reversible. Nightmares can be killed off so they can sleep at night without medications and most of the cross effects on the families are avoided so the families stay together, leaning on each other for support. The problem is, most of the time what they need to heal early on is something they don't receive. Families are usually left out. They don't know what they can do to help the veteran heal and end up harming them even more. Disfunction in the family, pointing fingers and blaming them for the trouble in the home ends up reinforcing how they already feel about themselves and this makes PTSD worse.

As the years go on PTSD gets worse left untreated much like an infection gets worse without treatment, more and more "tissue" is destroyed and the infection claims more territory. We all know what happens when an infection is finally treated. It leaves a scar. The depth of the scar depends on how long the infection was allowed to spread out.

With Vietnam veterans there is a lot more work to do to help them heal but it is never too late to start. I've seen them restore relationships with their adult children and often their estranged spouse. That is how amazing these veterans are. Most of the time they will end up working with newer veterans in some organization like Point Man International Ministries because they understand what it is like to be a member of this unique class of combat veteran. One out of three will end up with PTSD. Right now the rates are a bit higher because of the number of redeployments. We are seeing National Guards and Reservists coming in at 50%, Soldiers at 40% and Marines at about 30%. When Vietnam veterans tackle a problem, they do it 100%! The newer generation thinks it is all about them but when you ask a Vietnam veteran what they get out of helping this generation of veterans, they say it is healing themselves as well.

My advice after almost 30 years is, learn all you can what PTSD is and get help as soon as possible. If you end up with medication that is not helping, talk to your doctor and get on something else. Don't stop there. Make sure your treatment includes all of you. Your overall health needs to be addressed with diet and exercise to retrain your body to work better. Your spiritual health needs to be addressed since PTSD is more of a spiritual wound than a simple psychological one. As time goes on, relationships pay a price, so the people in your life need to be included in on the healing too. They may not know what you went through, but they do know what it was doing to you and them as well. What you cannot cure, you can find peace enough to live with it and learn how to overcome it. PTSD does not have to win. The longer you wait, the stronger it gets.

This is a good article on this topic.

Are you too old to heal?
by Heidi Schussman Gilbert, published on January 30, 2012

Most of us have at least one person in our family who has served in the military during wartime. These men and women live amongst us, some suffering more than others, some not suffering at all. As they age their sense of self worth comes into focus, and they struggle to explain themselves to younger family members. Talking about traumatic events experienced during war is stressful and exhausting. So the question is “Should we dredge up old painful memories? Are our grandfathers and fathers too old to heal?”

Apparently Frazier Sheppard and Laverne Shimanek feel you are never too old to heal. Sheppard (US Army, Vietnam) and Shimanek (US Marine, Korea) are both veterans of war and now they reside at Carmichael Care and Rehabilitation Center where Sheppard is President and Shimanek is Vice President of the Resident Council.

Shimanek and Sheppard frequently meet together to decide what would be best for their fellow residents. They then present the idea as a vote, or just try an activity and see how it goes. For some time they have noted a tendency for veterans to huddle together in the facility lobby, family room, or courtyard and talk quietly amongst themselves. Semper Fi, Hoorah, and a sharp salute are shared up and down the hospital corridors. Sheppard and Shimanek brought the idea of creating a social time for vets to Tracy Haroldson, the Activities Director.
read more here