PTSD Hitting Senior Veterans Late in Life

For some aging vets, PTSD triggered late in life
Michigan Radio
Kate Wells
April 8, 2014

There’s still so much we don’t understand about war vets and PTSD, or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Why some experience it, but so many others don’t.

Why one vet can have symptoms right away, while another can be fine for years.

Now older generations of veterans from World War II, Korea and Vietnam are showing us that PTSD can actually be triggered late in life.

Especially when veterans are dying.

Wide awake, but the nightmares persist

When Brenda Jackson was really little, she'd get up in the night and find her dad, wide awake, holding his head in his hands.

"My dad was Lenwood Long. He served in the Pacific in World War II, and he saw a lot of combat," says Jackson. "Ironically, we could never get him to talk about that time. We knew that he suffered, but we did not recognize it as PTSD."

Jackson is now 73, a retired nurse practitioner living outside St. Petersburg, Florida.

Brenda Jackson's father served in WWII. He started experiencing late-onset PTSD. She remembers her father was more reserved when he got back from war. The family knew he had trouble sleeping – hence the nights spent with his head in has hands.

But it wasn't until a stroke landed him in the VA hospital that they realized the extent of his trauma.

First, he started having nightmares while he was wide awake.
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