PTSD What Are You Really Aware Of?

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
April 25, 2015

This article got to me this morning.

The deepest war wound may be the anguish of moral injury 
Los Angeles Times
BY NANCY SHERMAN
April 25, 2015

Moral injury is distinct from post-traumatic stress disorder, which is generally thought of narrowly as a fear-conditioned syndrome marked by hyper-vigilance and flashbacks. The prevailing treatment for PTSD is therapy to “decondition” the fear response. But guilt, shame, raging resentment and betrayal are different from fear. To overcome them requires relationships that rebuild a soldier's sense of trust in himself and others, no small order given the effects of war.

When the Greek playwright Sophocles came home from war, in the 5th century BC, trust and betrayal must have been on his mind. He wrote “Philoctetes,” about a wounded Greek warrior abandoned by Odysseus on the way to Troy.

The stench of Philoctetes' wound and his wails of distress made him a liability. That is, until Philoctetes' sacred bow, a gift from the god Heracles, turned out to be the Greeks' last hope for defeating the Trojans. Odysseus returned to rescue Philoctetes (or at least his bow), but he dared not show his face to the man he had left behind. Hidden, he coached a young soldier, Neoptolemus, on how to build rapport with Philoctetes in order to exploit it to get the bow.

The twist in the play is that real trust is cultivated instead; and with it, hope that heals.

The ancient Greeks understood Philoctetes' agony and salvation in the context of the Peloponnesian War. Modern Americans can apply it to the longest conflicts in American history: the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, in which 2.7 million troops have served.

Many are bringing home the weight of resentment and betrayal, and often guilt and shame, even if it's masked by a stoic military demeanor. Like Philoctetes, some feel betrayed by commanders or unit members; some by civilians who've been “at the mall while we've been at war”; and some by politicians they think have failed to take full responsibility for the wars they started.
read more here

It seems as if everyone is doing something to help raise awareness on PTSD, and that is a good thing to a point. The trouble is when no one seems aware of what they need to know if they have PTSD.

There is what the general public seems to believe and then there is the reality of what is actually real to the veterans.

First is how they feel about their service with the DOD claiming they are treating soldiers for what comes after their operational battles. The fight to stay alive after combat is the one they are not equipped to win. No matter what the DOD claims about their own "efforts" to help soldiers heal, the end result has been a rise in suicides.
USA Today addressed a huge part of the problem. Comprehensive Soldier Fitness is the biggest reason why suicides went up. It tells soldiers that they can train their brains to be mentally tough, translating they must be weak if they end up with PTSD. In other words, it is their fault. This is not just a theory. It is what the head of the Army actually admitted he believes. During an interview with the Huffington Post Odierno said a mouthful. Army Chief Ray Odierno Warns Military Suicides 'Not Going To End' After War Is Over

Q: Why do I think some people are able to deal with stress differently than others?
A: There are a lot of different factors. Some of it is just personal make-up. Intestinal fortitude. Mental toughness that ensures that people are able to deal with stressful situations.

This wasn't just a slip because as later reports showed, it was spread wider reenforcing the soldiers beliefs they had something to be ashamed of. Blaming soldiers and their families in public was tame compared to what they actually had to endure.

They had to even endure this emotional abuse in the very place they were sent to as a place to heal. Warrior Transition Units treated them as if they were a problem to the military.

The Dallas Morning News and NBC out of Texas did fantastic reporting on this in Injured Heroes Broken Promises however, when the national news stations failed to notice, the general pubic was left without a clue as to what was behind most of the suffering they wanted to raise awareness of.

The military keeps telling reporters they understand and are doing something to help mend them after war but as suicides within the military and in the veterans community increased, they failed to change anything they did wrong.

Army morale low despite 6-year, $287M optimism program
USA TODAY
Gregg Zoroya
April 16, 2015

"The Army funds this program because the Army values the lives of soldiers and wants to instill skills and competencies that will enhance their connections, relationships and ability to mitigate stressors and exercise help seeking behaviors through their life," says an Army statement released last month.

More than half of some 770,000 soldiers are pessimistic about their future in the military and nearly as many are unhappy in their jobs, despite a six-year, $287 million campaign to make troops more optimistic and resilient, findings obtained by USA TODAY show.

Twelve months of data through early 2015 show that 403,564 soldiers, or 52%, scored badly in the area of optimism, agreeing with statements such as "I rarely count on good things happening to me." Forty-eight percent have little satisfaction in or commitment to their jobs.

The results stem from resiliency assessments that soldiers are required to take every year. In 2014, for the first time, the Army pulled data from those assessments to help commanders gauge the psychological and physical health of their troops.

The effort produced startlingly negative results. In addition to low optimism and job satisfaction, more than half reported poor nutrition and sleep, and only 14% said they are eating right and getting enough rest.

The Army began a program of positive psychology in 2009 in the midst of two wars and as suicide and mental illness were on the rise. To measure resiliency the Army created a confidential, online questionnaire that all soldiers, including the National Guard and Reserve, must fill out once a year.

Last year, Army scientists applied formulas to gauge service-wide morale based on the assessments. The results demonstrate that positive psychology "has not had much impact in terms of overall health," says David Rudd, president of the University of Memphis who served on a scientific panel critical of the resiliency program.
read more here

The worst part of all of this is none of this should have surprised anyone. Even I predicted pushing this FUBAR research project of Comprehensive Soldier Fitness would increase suicides back in 2009.

If you promote this program the way Battlemind was promoted, count on the numbers of suicides and attempted suicides to go up instead of down. It's just one more deadly mistake after another and just as dangerous as sending them into Iraq without the armor needed to protect them.

Again, there are conversations we have and then there are conversations the general public has. Ours is based on the realities we live with everyday hitting every part of our lives. I didn't got to war, but I was the daughter of an Army veteran and am a wife of an Army veteran. What happens to them hits us and our children.

We become experts on what war does after the fact and the facts don't change just because reporters ignore most of it.

Soldiers have to battle the DOD, struggle with being treated as if they are bad soldiers, enforced by the threat of bad paper discharges, like the Army discharging 11,000 in 2013 alone, and being sent to hell to "heal" and then once they are out of the military, treated to more betrayal because the VA wasn't ready for any of them. Wonder how long it will take to actually give these veterans justice? We have an example of that from what was done to Vietnam veterans as 80,000 out of 250,000 are getting a second chance.

We put blame right where it belongs and that is with members of Congress!