PTSD Therapy Saved My Life — It's Time to Kill the Stigma

PTSD Therapy Saved My Life — It's Time to Kill the Stigma
Policy Mic
By Adrian Bonenberger
November 11, 2013

Most infantrymen I know grow beards when they leave the Army.

They take a couple weeks off, tear through some booze and cash, get a little wild, play that video game they’ve been waiting to dive into for a while (mine was Skyrim), exhale, and then get back to work or school.

This seems to be necessary in part because the military still doesn’t have a very good approach to the almost inevitable psychiatric and social disorders that come about as a natural outgrowth of going to war — a group of neuroses and behaviors collectively known as PTSD, or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

I had a fairly intense case of PTSD when I was in the Army, did a bad job of taking it seriously, and was not encouraged to take it seriously. I wanted to take advantage of this platform to say some words about the process.

Enough has been said about PTSD at this point so it doesn’t seem critical to go into a detailed background of the issue. For those unfamiliar with the term, PTSD describes a condition wherein a person who has lived through a traumatic event finds themselves unable to move forward because that event exists in their present rather than their past. For people with PTSD, their brains are hung up on some memory, which they re-live as though it is happening again and again — through dreams, nightmares, or waking anxiety. Any traumatic incident can trigger PTSD.

"At the end of my military career, I was lucky to have a direct supervisor, Major Matt Hardman, who encouraged me to seek treatment, although not everyone in the chain of command was as understanding. The overall culture of the military, and especially combat arms and the infantry, is one that is diametrically opposed to people seeking help for psychological and sometimes even physical injuries. I hope that my fellow vets (and especially combat vets) all make good use of the free therapy available to them at the VA, and take the problem seriously.

There are effective treatments out there, and if everyone works hard to tackle the legacy and trauma of war, we can reduce or even defeat the old stereotype of the haunted war vet.

I’m living proof."

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