Another quack calls PTSD "pseudo-illness"

Last week, I read this on my 28th anniversary married to a Vietnam "PTDSer" and got sick to my stomach that this load of crap is still coming out of "educated" deniers. 40 years ago, there was an excuse to be uneducated because the study of PTSD was new to a lot of people but living with it was as old as humans walking around the planet.

How do these deniers explain what used to be called "shell shock" from wars before Vietnam? The study of PTSD is only called "pseudo" by flat earth believers now.

Wednesday I was at the VA talking to a psychiatrist I know and brought this up to her. She was disgusted this attitude is still going on then she reminded me how many thought the same way in the 70's.

In the 80's it was not as bad. In the 90's it was better. By the time 2001 came, experts understood it so well they were trying to warn people about what was coming after the attack.

They were right but this denier is writing an op-ed to attack the veterans we've all been fighting so hard for all these years.

"My thesis is that the function of the PTSD pseudo-diagnosis is that it gives voice as scapegoat to disowned parts of our national laments. We might think of PTSD as scapegoat – those with the diagnosis hold the revulsion that we can’t express more directly because of political and cultural constraint."

"The PTSDer gets an enormous amount of pseudo-sympathy directed at him. The complexity is that he is also held in contempt, drugged as if he is unable to bear his memories, pathetic, requiring medical attention in lieu of compassionate understanding."

I wanted to let this go but was sent the link too many times. I can't avoid addressing it anymore. This is what it is like for veterans to go to see someone that is not a trauma expert. They all get it wrong if they don't understand it.

OP-ED: PTSD, The Grand Scapegoat
Sunday, September 30, 2012
BY JOSEPH TARANTOLO, M.D.

The diagnosis of PTSD was created in response to pressure from Vietnam veterans who wanted to be sure of their right to receive medical and financial benefits as befitting any man (the military was minimally integrated at that time) who fought in an unpopular and hateful war. We must be clear about this to be able to take PTSD out of the sphere of medical diagnoses and place it where it belongs: a social, political, and moral position in a country ambivalent about its warriors.

If PTSD is not an illness, a medical condition, if we are clear about that, we can then be able to ask pertinent questions about the function and purpose of this pseudo-illness. What purpose does this diagnosis serve? Whereas initially, post-Vietnam, the diagnosis allowed an outlet for the country’s guilt for over 50,000 American deaths and a million Vietnamese deaths for an ill-begotten war which ultimately detracted from our world status and security, we are once again faced with harrowing questions about our national character:

(1) Are we a peace-loving or warmongering nation?
(2) Are we freedom-loving? Do we love freedom more than security?
(3) Are we committed to a noble view of the “warrior class” or is our deeper value more darkly cynical?

In answering these questions certain truths should be addressed:

(1) A large chunk of our volunteer military, perhaps a majority, seek out the military for a secure job, not out of patriotic love of country or the honor and courage associated with military service. This is particularly true in difficult economic times. We now have a type of military socialism – not quite what Eisenhower warned about a “military-industrial complex” but close – where very large numbers of the populace directly rely on the war machine to earn a living.