As veterans return, PTSD could become more common in workplace

If you learn nothing else from this report, I hope you keep this part in mind.

PTSD affects about 7.7 million adults, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.

Combat veterans and civilians exposed to traumatic events share two things. The first is they are humans and the second, they survived something most humans never have to go through.

As veterans return, PTSD could become more common in workplace
By KELLY YAMANOUCHI
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published: December 24, 2012

At a recent weekly staff meeting, human resources manager Zetta Ferguson noticed that one of her employees wasn’t sitting at the conference table.

She encouraged the employee who was sitting against the wall, Corey Michael McGee, to join the rest of the group at the table, but he declined. After the meeting, McGee explained: “I sit against the wall where I’m safest. Or in my mind I feel I’m safest.”

An Army veteran who was struck by an improvised explosive device and gunfire in Fallujah, Iraq, McGee says post-traumatic stress disorder and some remaining effects of his injuries affect him in some ways in the workplace, but “it’s gotten a lot better over the years.”

Many employers have not delved deeply into how they might address PTSD, a relatively new issue, but they could face it more frequently as more veterans return to the workforce.

About 2.4 million members of the military have been deployed in the past decade in Iraq and Afghanistan, and tens of thousands are returning home. The influx is expected to continue until 2016.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs estimates as many as 11 percent of veterans of the war in Afghanistan and 20 percent of Iraqi war veterans are afflicted by PTSD, which can generate both sympathy and fear.
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The last thing you should take away from this is PTSD is not a "relatively new issue" and it would be great if people stopped saying it was.