Students Open Eyes WIth Documentary PTSD: Let’s Talk About It.

With all the talk about PTSD Awareness achieving absolutely nothing, a group of high school kids actually managed to understand that veterans already know what the problem is but need to know where the hope is. They found it in a National Guardsman.

Film opens students’ eyes to PTSD
My Citizen News
Luke Marshall

NAUGATUCK — Students at Naugatuck High School took home an award for helping a veteran preserve his history.

Members of Naugatuck High School’s Preserving Our Histories Club pose for a photo at the Connecticut Student Film Festival in May. The club won first place in the Best Historical Short category at for its documentary, “PTSD: Let’s Talk About It.” -CTSFF2015 PHOTO COURTESY OF N.Y. VINTAGE CAMERAWORKS LTD

Naugatuck High School’s Preserving Our Histories Club won first place in the Best Historical Short category at the Connecticut Student Film Festival in May.

The school’s submission, a 4-minute documentary called “PTSD: Let’s Talk About It,” focused on Brookfield resident Brian Barkman, who served in the U.S. Army National Guard from 1998 until 2008.

“He had PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). He talked a lot about the stigma behind PTSD,” Naugatuck High senior Mukti Miha, one of the students worked on the film, said. “He talked a lot about how society thinks anyone with this disorder is crazy and can’t lead a normal life. He talked about how he leads a normal life day to day.”

Naugatuck High senior Harmony Sturdivant, who also worked on the film, said the club members chose to feature Barkman after they saw him give a talk about on PTSD at a digital media summit at Wesleyan University.

“It’s something we haven’t really seen about on the news or heard about too much, so we thought it would be a good topic to bring to the public,” Sturdivant said.
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Brian Barkman has an important story to tell starting with the simple fact that no place was safe in war and ending with he's a better person now.

That is the key to all of this. Understanding that no one goes through the risks during combat alone and knowing that no one is healed afterwards alone.

So how is it that veterans still think asking for help during combat to save lives becomes a deterrent to asking for help because of it?

He got help, is healing and living a better quality of life even though he still has PTSD. It is a battle he'll fight the rest of his life but it has lost power over his future.

Criminal Minds had a great quote that fits perfectly.

“Scars remind us where we've been. They don't have to dictate where we're going”
― David Rossi

The hardest scars to heal are in your soul because they are cut by the invisible weapon. No one can really see love and no one can really see emotional pain. Emotions are the all mighty weapon feeding our fears and fueling our hopes. The question is which one do you want to live by?

Surrendering to the past is the easiest because it means giving up accepting what has been as what will be. Taking the power back is the hardest because it means moving forward into the unknown but if you do it with hope, you do not go unarmed. If you do it the way you lived every other part of your life with the help of others, you are defeating the past.

Each of us are driven by our yesterdays with everything that happened from the moment we were born, connecting the good and bad times together. It is our choice if we let the past take control over our future or not. We can surrender what we become tomorrow or we can take the power back into our own hands.

Where do you go from here? Go backwards to what is impossible to change or forward to what can be?