When protectors need help from us

There is, and always shall be, a huge difference between the type of PTSD civilians get and the kind of PTSD police and the troops get. We can understand someone we know being changed by natural disasters, crimes and accidents as much as we can understand changes from abuse. What we can't seem to understand as easily is "participants" PTSD even though they don't face one event, but multiple events over and over again, often having to use violence in return to protect others.

Officer who killed himself after tragic rescue attempt denied spot on police memorial
Adrian Humphreys
Oct 7, 2012

"When he came home, I opened the door and the man I was married to was gone. He walked in the door but he never returned."

Night after night, Toronto police Staff-Sergeant Eddie Adamson would cry out during a fitful sleep: “I’m coming, I’m coming, don’t die!” It was but one reminder of the haunting day in 1980 when he boldly stormed a restaurant where a fellow officer who had been shot lay dying, brutalized and held hostage.

After 90 minutes waiting outside, hearing both Constable Michael Sweet beg for help and a senior officer ordering him not to assist, Staff-Sgt. Adamson could wait no longer. Ignoring orders, he led a charge that other officers immediately joined. Despite the swirling tear gas and raging battle with two gunmen who had botched their heist, Staff-Sgt. Adamson tore off his gas mask and frantically started mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in a vain attempt to save Const. Sweet.

For years afterward, Staff-Sgt. Adamson would call out in his sleep: “I’m coming, I’m coming, don’t die!”

That shocking murder on March 14, 1980, would claim another victim: Staff-Sgt. Adamson himself. Suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, he ended his own life in 2005 with the pistol meant to protect him and his family from Const. Sweet’s killers, who had continued to taunt and threaten from prison.
read more here

Why can't we understand when it is them? It is because we expect them to be braver than us, trained to be tougher and able to withstand whatever their duty puts them through. We don't want to think they are just as human as we are because then we'd have to actually see what we ask them to do.

No one wants to know what is going on in Afghanistan right now unless they are personally involved with it. No one wants to read about the troops coming home and suffering because the majority of Americans did a great job saying they supported the troops, but when it came time to act for their sake, they found other things to do.

So you just read a story about a police officer out of Canada, haunted by something he had to go through because it was his duty, then took his own life because he didn't get whatever it was he needed to heal. If we acknowledge how human they all are, where does it leave us? We expect them to protect us. Are we that uninformed about what they endure in order to protect us we shrug off what they need from us in return?

Remember these words because it happens all the time when men and women come home from Afghanistan just as when they came home from Iraq, Kuwait, Bosnia, Somalia, Vietnam, Korea and all the wars before that. "When he came home, I opened the door and the man I was married to was gone. He walked in the door but he never returned."