Time to get it right, PTSD is the signature wound of all wars

Time to get it right, PTSD is the signature wound of all wars
by Kathie Costos
Wounded Times Blog
June 6, 2013

"PTSD is a signature wounds of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars" a direct quote from the following article and one that is repeated far too often. It is not the signature wound of Iraq or Afghanistan, but the wound of every war. Until that part is remembered, we will keep dealing with the "great misunderstanding" that has caused fear and confusion. Since this is PTSD Awareness Month it is a good time to get something right once and for all!

Fears, misconceptions of PTSD fuel divide
By Leo Shane III
Stars and Stripes
Published: June 5, 2013

WASHINGTON — When her post-traumatic stress disorder surfaces, Roxann Abrams sees the gun pointed at her face again.

She sees the man threatening her life. She hears him yelling something, but can’t quite make out the words. She starts to hyperventilate, both in the past and in the present.

What her waking nightmare doesn’t include are the deserts of Iraq or the mountains of Afghanistan. That’s because Abrams never served in the military. Her PTSD stems from a robbery in Southern California 10 years ago.

“I’ll never know what it’s like to be on a battlefield,” she said. “I’ll never know what these guys have had to face out there.

“But I do know what it’s like to have night terrors, to lose control of your emotions. I know to some degree what they’re going through.”

PTSD is a signature wounds of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, a debilitating disability that ruined the lives of countless Vietnam veterans. It’s viewed as automatic side effect of seeing dead bodies and flying bullets, the inevitable lingering stress unique to the battlefield.

Only, it’s not.
read more here

Just because reporters, most of them born after the Vietnam War was over, suddenly discover the term PTSD, that does not mean it was invented by this generation. That is one of the biggest problems. Assuming it was not part of every generation assumes no one knew anything about it until now and therefore leaves people with the false impression excuses are acceptable. For my generation, the years of excuses have worn thin.

For the last 40 years, PTSD has been researched so many times you'd think the human brain has changed. Too many want to ignore the fact that every veteran since the beginning of recored history has been changed by combat and we're talking all the way back to the Bible. It isn't new. It is the same symptoms. Just because the press is reporting on it, does not make it new to veterans.

Books on PTSD started showing up in book stores in the 90's. Before that, they were in the libraries. One of the best things written was Achilles in Vietnam by Dr. Jonathan Shay.

"October 1, 1995 In this strikingly original and groundbreaking book, Dr. Shay examines the psychological devastation of war by comparing the soldiers of Homer's Iliad with Vietnam veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Although the Iliad was written twenty-seven centuries ago it has much to teach about combat trauma, as do the more recent, compelling voices and experiences of Vietnam vets."

Before the reports started coming out on Afghanistan veterans and PTSD, FOR THE LOVE OF JACK, HIS WAR MY BATTLE had a copyright of 2002 and addressed 18 years of my life with my husband, a Vietnam veteran with PTSD. Just like all the other wives out there, our stories were ignored, not that we would have talked to reporters back then since most of what they reported was all negative about our Vietnam Veterans. Didn't matter to most of them that we not only saw their pain and suffering but we saw how magnificent they really were and loved them enough to stay with them.

It didn't start with my generation either. Our parents came home to the term "shell shock" and their parents came home wounded by another term but not another wound. Every generation, just as human as the others before them suffered, healed and struggled to find hope of life getting better.

As long as reporters push the notion that PTSD is anything "new" we will keep repeating the same mistakes and end up with the same deadly results.