Why does Combat PTSD come with anger?

Why does Combat PTSD come with anger?
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
October 29, 2013

Reports like this come out all the time.

PTSD cases in veterans on the rise
Eyewitness News 13
By Steven Yablonski, Managing Editor
Posted: Oct 29, 2013

WATERFORD, CT (WFSB)
A former United States Marine took his life after holding his family of five hostage early Tuesday morning. Friends said the veteran was struggling with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Channel 3 Eyewitness News looked into the disorder that studies show affects 20 percent of recently-deployed soldiers.

Sadly, that number is only expected to grow as our service members return from war.

The battles don't end overseas and continue during the tough adjustment back to civilian life.

"They tend to be very serious," Navy veteran Vincent Marotta said. "They tend to be very angry."

The sometimes nasty side of a hero's return was made evident in Waterford early Tuesday morning when 31-year-old Justin Eldridge killed himself at his Great Neck Road home after a police standoff. His four children were in the home when the event occurred.
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Reports like this will keep coming out unless we address this once and for all. The numbers are only the start of all of this and that is the most frightening thing of all.

They will keep going up because we already have the evidence in what happened when Vietnam veterans came home. By 1978 500,000 Vietnam Veterans had PTSD. (The Ethnology of Combat Related Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Jim Goodwin Psy.D) but their numbers went up after that.

The El Paso Times had this report in October of 2007

In the past 18 months, 148,000 Vietnam veterans have gone to VA centers reporting symptoms of PTSD "30 years after the war," said Brig. Gen. Michael S. Tucker, deputy commanding general of the North Atlantic Regional Medical Command and Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He recently visited El Paso.

We are still seeing their numbers go up after decades of outreach efforts and the fact that many of the Vietnam veterans retiring are no longer able to stuff what once was mild PTSD. They are shocked to discover they never really left Vietnam.

These wars will be paid for decades by those we sent.

We learned a lot from Vietnam veterans but then again, it is because of them we had anything ready, as substandard as the care is, because they fought for all of it. We learned that unless they have the proper care for their minds as well as their bodies and spirits, they do not heal as well as they should. Giving them medications does not heal them. They just become numb and sooner or later, it all catches up to them.

They get angry because a part of them was left behind in combat. That fight or flight response has no where to go. Their body reacts to triggers that make them feel threatened just as their minds do. Top all that off with the simple fact that life back in the states adds more stress onto their shoulders, especially when they are trying to get the care they were promised from the military and the VA, their families pressuring them to "get over it" and go back to "normal" because they don't understand PTSD and frustration with themselves because they can't "get back to normal" and that is where a lot of the anger comes from.

Every veteran I have talked to over the years basically told the same story. They blamed themselves for everything that happened in combat and afterwards.

It is really time to stop pretending any of this is new so that we can get angry in their place. Get angry they are still suffering after all these years on a massive scale instead of healing the way others have. Get angry the DOD had over 900 prevention programs. Get angry we have heard all the stupid claims made about why they take their own lives. Get angry families are still left clueless as they watch someone they love die a slow death.

Get angry they blame themselves when the veteran takes their own life because they didn't want to live anymore after doing whatever they had to do to stay alive in combat.

If knowing what happened so many years ago doesn't get you angry yet, then nothing will change and we'll just keep burying them under the mountain of excuses and baseless claims that we're doing something. We went from Vietnam veterans having nothing available for them to too little working for the veterans today. Anger is safe. Anger does not let them down. It does not betray them. It doesn't let them feel the pain of loss or guilt that haunts them instead of allowing them to find peace to heal from. Anger? Sure. But then again if we got angry a long time ago, they would be healing instead of just feeling hopeless.