When it comes to Combat and PTSD, Jonathan Shay is the smartest guy in the room

When it comes to Combat and PTSD, Jonathan Shay is the smartest guy in the room
by Kathie Costos
Wounded Times Blog
April 2, 2013

Way back in 1999 I had Achilles in Vietnam in my hands and was crying soon after I started reading it.

I wrote about Shay in my upcoming book, THE WARRIOR SAW, SUICIDES AFTER WAR for several reasons. He has been talking about PTSD before reporters cared but families like mine were living with it. He talked about the spiritual connection and how important community support was. Had Shay been listened to when the over 900 suicide prevention programs were being developed, we wouldn't have seen suicides go up and I wouldn't be writing a book on military suicides because families asked me to after they had to bury someone they loved.

This is one of the quotes from my book.

Jonathan Shay wrote Achilles in Vietnam and addressed this connection in 1994.

“Moral-ruin” Achilles possessed a highly developed social morality. This was reflected in his care for the welfare of other Greek soldiers, respect for enemies, living and dead, and the reluctance to kill prisoners. Achilles moral unluckiness, his tragedy was that events-simply what happened, created the desire to do things that he himself regarded as bad.”

Shay wrote about a three tour Vietnam veteran and how as a kid growing up thinking how God would judge what he did and what he was thinking at the time. Little things he was sure God would forgive him for even if He didn’t approve of what he did but in combat all that changed.

“But evil didn’t enter it ‘til Vietnam. I mean real evil. I wasn’t prepared for it at all. Why I became like that? It was all evil. Where before, I wasn’t. I look back, I look back today and I am horrified at what I turned into. What I was. What I did. I just look at it like it was somebody else.

War changes you. Strips you of all your beliefs, your religion, takes your dignity away, you become an animal.”
(Achilles in Vietnam, Jonathan Shay)

Moral Wounds of War: Jonathan Shay Part 1
ReligionEthics PBS

"Recovery happens only in community. Peers are the key to recovery."

PTSD Expert Jonathan Shay to Hold Discussion with Veterans at UNC
Asheville
University of North Carolina
April 1, 2013

Dr. Jonathan Shay, a renowned psychiatrist who has specialized in treating veterans of war, will offer three public talks, April 9-11, at UNC Asheville. He also will meet with UNC Asheville's Student-Veteran Alliance as well as students and community members.

The following events take place on the UNC Asheville campus and are free and open to the public:

Tuesday, April 9 – "Moral Luck," an examination of philosophical experiences of soldiers in combat, from Homer's "The Iliad" to present day. 7:30 p.m., Sherrill Center, Mountain View Room.

Wednesday, April 10 – "Theatre of War," exploring the role of the arts in healing of the physically and psychologically wounded. 7.30 p.m.,Highsmith University Union, Alumni Hall.

Thursday, April 11 – "Open Discussion – Sleep, Community and other Hobby Horses." Dr. Shay will lead a discussion with veterans and members of the community encouraged to participate. 7.30 p.m., Sherrill Center, Mountain View Room.

A clinical psychiatrist and humanities scholar, Dr. Shay is the author of groundbreaking books on the nature and treatment of PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), and he is a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.

His visit to UNC Asheville is sponsored by the university's NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor in Humanities, Sophie Mills, who champions the use of ancient classics to understand contemporary issues. "By using Homer to illuminate modern veterans' experiences, he has created a powerful body of work that has broadened and deepened the understanding of humanists, military leaders and psychologists concerning military combat and its effects on human beings," she says.

Dr. Shay views PTSD as a psychological injury of war, not a mental disorder. In a New York Times interview, Shay said that when soldiers return home, they often retain behaviors they adopted for their survival in combat. "Most of it really boils down to the valid adaptations in the mind and body to the real situation of other people trying to kill you,'' he said. read more here