Catchy Phrase "22 A Day" Hasn't Caught Many Before Suicide

Change the Conversation to Healing Awareness
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
October 10, 2015

When the topic is veterans committing suicide, everyone seems to want to do something to save them. The truth is, all too often, we discover that doing something can be worse than doing nothing.

Sure, it is good that civilians are reminded the price of war is never paid in full.

“Only the dead have seen the end of war.”

Plato

This is an interview with Dr. Jonathan Shay on the "moral injury" he was talking about back in the 90's before PTSD ended up being the talk of the web. Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character Paperback – October 1, 1995

It was the first book I read on PTSD that I actually felt important enough to contact Dr. Shay. I was in tears when I started reading it. If you want to know what I think is the best thing written on PTSD it is that book! Plus it goes to show that PTSD is not new even though it may be news to some folks. This is an interview Dr. Shay did with NPR in 2012.

Moral Injury: The Psychological Wounds Of War
CONAN: This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan. This hour we're talking about moral injury, a relatively new term used to characterize emotional scars that members of the armed forces bring back from the battlefield after doing and witnessing things that violate core beliefs.

CONAN: And Dr. Shay, I wanted to bring you in here. There's a lot to talk about. Obviously you can't do any kind of diagnosis on the radio. But the - one of the things that seemed to me interesting that Ben talked about is that he does have a PTSD diagnosis. These two things are not mutually exclusive. SHAY: No, they're not mutually exclusive at all. Moral injury can lead to PTSD, moral injury can come after PTSD. I mean, the simplest way to understand PTSD is the persistence into civilian life of absolutely valid survival adaptations, adaptations that let you survive when other human beings really are trying to kill you and doing a damn good job of it.

You can hear the rest of the interview here
If you are among those wanting to help start with changing the conversation and making them aware they can heal. They already know they have a problem. They just don't know what to do about it and even less understand what PTSD is.