We watched the numbers go up followed by reports that more than half of the suicides came after they sought out help. Over and over again the "stigma" of PTSD has been given as a reason too many deny they need help, yet the program the military has been pushing contributed to this harmful notion. After all, when the military tells soldiers they can train their brains to be mentally tough, what other thoughts could they have?
The truth is, Combat PTSD hits the soul more than anything else.
Beyond PTSD: Soldiers Have Injured Souls
BY DIANE SILVER
September 01, 2011
What sometimes happens in war may more accurately be called a moral injury — a deep soul wound that pierces a person’s identity, sense of morality and relationship to society. In short, a threat in a solder’s life.
Now that modern militaries accept that war creates psychological trauma, therapists wonder about its toll on the spirit.
The psychological toll taken by war is obvious. For the second year in a row, more active-duty troops committed suicide in 2010 (468) than were killed in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan (462). A 2008 RAND Corporation study reported that nearly 1 in 5 troops who had returned from Iraq and Afghanistan reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress or major depression.
Since the American Psychiatric Association added post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, to its diagnostic manual in 1980, the diagnosis has most often focused on trauma associated with threats to a soldier’s life. Today, however, therapists such as Jonathan Shay, a retired VA psychiatrist and recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant; Edward Tick, director of the private group Soldier’s Heart; and Brett Litz, a VA psychologist, argue that this concept is too limited. What sometimes happens in war may more accurately be called a moral injury — a deep soul wound that pierces a person’s identity, sense of morality and relationship to society. In short, a threat in a solder’s life.
“My colleagues and I suspect that the greatest lasting harm is from moral injury,” says Litz, director of the Mental Health Core of the Massachusetts Veterans Epidemiological Research and Information Center. He and six colleagues published an article on the topic in the December 2009 Clinical Psychological Review, in which they define moral injury as a wound that can occur when troops participate in, witness or fall victim to actions that transgress their most deeply held moral beliefs.
While the severity of this kind of wound differs from person to person, moral injury can lead to deep despair.
“They have lost their sense that virtue is even possible,” Shay says. “It corrodes the soul.”
It goes even deeper than that. It is the strength of their soul that causes the deepest wound.
Combat PTSD is different from all other causes. The type of PTSD police officers and firefighters get is close to it because they also risk their lives willingly for the sake of others.
For servicemen and women, it is in their core. That ability to care so much they are willing to die for someone else.
to rise above or go beyond; overpass; exceed: to transcend the limits of thought; kindness transcends courtesy.
Once we understand this, once we finally explain to them why they were afflicted by PTSD, we can being to truly help them heal.
This is what the military and the Congress has failed to understand. They proved they were already resilient when they signed up, survived training, separation from families and friends, sacrificed and we willing to endure deployments they knew could cost them their lives.
It is the ultimate explanation of courage because they care so deeply about the others they serve with, there are no limits to what they are willing to do for their sake.
That strength of their souls comes with a price. The ability to care that much also allows them to grieve so deeply.
Nice Page and update. i like blogwalking
ReplyDelete