A Vietnam war-hero's perspective on P.T.S.D.

A war-hero's perspective on P.T.S.D.
WYMT
MGN Online
By: Eric Eckstrom
Jul 25, 2013
University of Pikeville Professor Basil Clark has been given many titles in his life. Scholar, war veteran, husband and father, but a man with P.T.S.D. was never one of them.

“At the time I just knew I was going through these wrestling phases,” said Clark.

By all accounts, Clark is a war hero, twice being recognized for his bravery during the Vietnam war, earning him a Bronze and Silver Star respectively, but the subsequent mental war was his greatest challenge.

“There's kind of this fog that’s around you, like, what's happening? I can’t see clearly,” he said.

Experts at the National Center for P.T.S.D. say they are currently making progress on diagnostic tools to better identify that fog.

Clark says, for him, it was writing and faith in a higher power that was his compass through the mist....

“Getting it out and getting it on paper was really a catharsis,” he said.

Clark is finishing a new book called 'War Wounded: Let the Healing Begin,’ stemming from conversations with others suffering from traumatic experiences. But it’s a poem Clark recited from memory that perhaps summarizes his journey and so many others like him.”
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