Iraq War Vet Talks Fort Hood Shooting, PTSD

Iraq War Vet Talks Fort Hood Shooting, PTSD
HuffPost Live
by Emily Tess Katz
Posted: 04/03/2014

In the wake of the Fort Hood shooting Wednesday, war veterans joined HuffPost Live to discuss the mental health issues, namely Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, plaguing their community.

Travis Bickford, an Iraq War veteran and District Director of Veteran Services of City Colleges Chicago, suggested that soldiers might be more susceptible to mental illness depending on their upbringing.

"If you look at the demographic for which the population pool that the military recruits from, especially on the enlisted side, you're recruiting from a demographic that's already possibly predisposed to trauma given it's typically low-income areas that we're pulling from, so you're dealing with that," he told HuffPost Live's Ricky Camilleri in an interview on Thursday.

"We hyper-focus on the PTSD that's related to battlefield trauma when, in actuality, we need to start looking at both of those, and looking at how the battlefield trauma could be exasperating and compounding some other traumas that they've experienced," he added.
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