More Military Officers Getting Help for PTSD Including Chaplains

Just because they have faith does not protect them from feeling the emotional toll of what they do. I am a Chaplain (Civilian, not military) and I depend on a large group of spiritual leaders in Point Man Ministries for support. Without them and the support I have received over the last 30 years, I wouldn't be able to help anyone including my own husband.

Some people just assume if you are faithful then you wouldn't be suffering. Yet it is because you are, you did what was needed for the sake of someone else, that you can be torn. The more you feel, the more you feel everything. Get help to feel better. You are not stuck suffering with PTSD and your life can change again.

Less silent suffering: Veterans’ post-traumatic stress taken seriously
The Washington Times
By Maggie Ybarra
Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Baseball stadiums are some of the few places where Navy Cmdr. Steven Dundas feels safe, where his mind is not anxiously inching toward the past and latching onto memories of children with missing body parts and the stench of burning swamp fires.

The crack of the bat and the whiz of the ball during a minor league Norfolk Tides game at Harbor Park pulls him into the present and reminds him that he is no longer working at a trauma hospital in a war zone. Cmdr. Dundas, a 54-year-old chaplain for the Joint Forces Staff College, is one of a growing number of military officers struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder.

“I came home feeling completely isolated. I didn’t fit in society,” said Cmdr. Dundas, who served in the military for more than 25 years before he was afflicted with PTSD in 2008 while deployed in Iraq.

“Other chaplains and clergy did very little for me. I felt even cut off from God and for about two years, until about December 2009, I was pretty much an agnostic, just hoping that God was still around.”

The Defense Department has reported an uptick in the number of military officers who, like Cmdr. Dundas, are seeking help to cope with the disorder, borne out of war zone trauma and characterized by bouts of anxiety and paranoia. It is often accompanied by night terrors and irrational behavior and has spawned violent behavior and suicides.
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