All Generations In the Living Years of PTSD

Passing On Living Years With PTSD
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
March 28, 2015

Generations of veterans are still living in this country, ready and willing to help the younger ones but they have not been ready to learn. We're in this battle to defeat PTSD the same as them but forgotten. 

That is the saddest part of all because as you hear about younger veterans committing suicide, we remember the others no one ever talked about.

Jake Tapper of CNN put up a stunning picture "At the service for Iraq war veteran SGT Richard Miles, who took his own life last month."

I read the comments on his Twitter feed with most saying how sad it was. It is even sadder for folks paying attention all along. It isn't one family a day.

It isn't even the much publicized 22 a day. It is happening to veterans double the civilian population in state after state all over the country. The majority of those veterans are over 50. Veterans of the past wars no one really paid attention to. After all, when they came home, they came home to vanish into the general population. Reporters were not interested in what was happening to them.

What makes this even sadder is that for the last decade, Congress has been pushing bills faster than they research what is causing the increase. In other words, they are recycling failures. The result is newer veterans are committing suicide triple their peer rate after all the years of efforts.

Mike and The Mechanics had it right.

"The Living Years"


Every generation
Blames the one before
And all of their frustrations
Come beating on your door
I know that I'm a prisoner
To all my Father held so dear
I know that I'm a hostage
To all his hopes and fears
I just wish I could have told him in the living years

Every generation blames the one before because they refused to learn from them. Learn what worked as well as what failed so they wouldn't repeat the same mistakes or gain opportunities to avoid lost time learning the hard way on their own.

The older generation of veterans came home just as the other come home now, however while this generation uses the social media and the internet to spread the word about what is going on, the older veterans learned from the younger ones how to use what they have to help themselves. Too bad it didn't work the other way around.

It is almost as if the OEF OIF generation was appointed to be the only veterans suffering. After all, considering they are the only generation to receive mass attention from new charities popping up all over the country, reporters spread the word about how to donate to them and Congress passing bills just for them, it is hard to have the time to notice the others.

Early attempts at a medical diagnosis

Accounts of psychological symptoms following military trauma date back to ancient times. The American Civil War (1861-1865) and the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) mark the start of formal medical attempts to address the problems of military Veterans exposed to combat.

"In September 1914, at the very outset of the great war, a dreadful rumor arose. It was said that at the Battle of the Marne, east of Paris, soldiers on the front line had been discovered standing at their posts in all the dutiful military postures—but not alive. “Every normal attitude of life was imitated by these dead men,” according to the patriotic serial The Times History of the War, published in 1916." WORLD WAR I: 100 YEARS LATER

But you can read even more online about the WAR and Military Mental Health The US Psychiatric Response in the 20th Century, if you are not convinced that every generation suffered the same things that break your heart today.

They committed suicide but families didn't talk about it. They used drugs and alcohol to numb the pain, but no one talked about it. They were supposed to be ashamed of themselves and families didn't know any better, so they were ashamed as well.

Vietnam veterans and families like mine learned from the generation before. We used the buildings with a lot of books in them we could hold in our hands. The library was our safe haven where we could touch history learning from what others didn't talk about. We had to learn the hard way because it was the only way.

Wives like me were fighting for their lives, just as our parents did but we were not ready to simply suffer in silence. We were not just fighting for our own husbands. We found a way to discover others and ended up fighting for their families side by side. It was all one huge family writing letters by hand or typing letters to members of Congress in the 70's.

As more and more research was being done, we learned. We passed on what we learned to our parents so they would understand what all the "living years" with their veterans were caused by.

In the 80's the Department of Veterans Affairs finally honored these veterans. Not just Vietnam veterans, but all generations.

In 1980, APA added PTSD to DSM-III, which stemmed from research involving returning Vietnam War Veterans, Holocaust survivors, sexual trauma victims, and others. Links between the trauma of war and post-military civilian life were established.

"So we open up a quarrel

Between the present and the past

We only sacrifice the future

It's the bitterness that lasts"

Our heartaches even more for the newer generation because they are getting the attention. They are getting more help than we ever did because everyone seems to want to do "something" to help. Yet as the result produces more and more suffering, it is clear to us that "something" is not what is needed. It is not what we fought so long and so hard for. It is not what worked for us and what was discovered by our generation has been forgotten.

While everyone seems to be able to shed a tear pretending there are not a million reasons to cry a river, we only sacrifice the future and let the bitterness last. It doesn't have to be this way. It doesn't have to end this way for thousand of veterans a year. The new generation has an obligation to learn from older veterans, not just for their own sake but for the generation coming after them. Our generation will be gone by then.

Let this be the start of the living years!