Veteran's family calls for better PTSD treatment after his death

Lopatcong Township veteran's family calls for better PTSD treatment after his death
Express Times
Sarah Peters
December 7, 2013

Laura Arace looks over scrapbooks of Nick Arace's military service.

Ever since Lopatcong Township resident Nick Arace came back from Iraq, he was haunted by what he saw there.

The 26-year-old Army infantryman told his mother, Laura Arace, that he had seen people die. And while neither explosives nor the enemy claimed his life, an uphill battle with post-traumatic stress disorder and addiction did, his mother said.

He died at home Sunday of what his family suspects was a drug overdose. Arace was hospitalized for rehab and PTSD therapy more than 30 times, Laura Arace said.

“When they released him, he would say, ‘I can’t take it, because my head won’t shut up,'” she said. “The system is broken. Anybody that knew him knew he was on a mission to die,” she said, surrounded by loved ones in her Lopatcong Township home.

Arace was so determined to join the Army, he took a metal rod out of his arm himself so he could pass the entrance test, according to his mother. Ever since parents of some of his high school friends died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he wanted to serve, she said.

But he struggled to readjust to civilian life.
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