Aa
Help the Vets
http://www.nationaljournal.com/defense/how-can-government-battle-a-suicide-epidemic-among-veterans-20140403
Oh all the stories I have ever read this is one of the saddest I have read. It makes me wonder what happened after WWI and WWII? Has something in our culture changed? Has it always been this way?
Oh all the stories I have ever read this is one of the saddest I have read. It makes me wonder what happened after WWI and WWII? Has something in our culture changed? Has it always been this way?
"Commentator Andrew Bacevich" is a retired Army Col. who teaches Political and Military History at Boston University. His books are clear, concise, and a must read for anyone who takes an interest in what is actually happening in our world.
From letters I have that were sent and received from the South Pacific, I know my father emerged from WW II a changed man. He was a good person, but it wasn't until I'd grown up that I realized that not everyone had their first drink at noon every day nor slept with an M1 within easy reach every night.
From letters I have that were sent and received from the South Pacific, I know my father emerged from WW II a changed man. He was a good person, but it wasn't until I'd grown up that I realized that not everyone had their first drink at noon every day nor slept with an M1 within easy reach every night.
U.S. state of 'semi-war' takes toll on military, society
Phillip Hatfield [Op-Ed]
"The recent (and welcome) conclusion of the court-martial of Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair provides an opportunity to reflect on military discipline and sexual misconduct. I will not repeat the disturbing statistics, but no one disputes that there appears to have been a substantial increase in various forms of sexual misbehavior over the past decade. While the individuals responsible should be prosecuted and, if convicted, punished for their crimes, such individual resolutions should not prevent us from considering systemic causes.
One of these causes involves the relatively recent acceleration of the growth in a key cultural difference that has driven the United States: our commitment to maintaining the United States in a constant state of what commentator Andrew Bacevich calls "semi-war." The central tenets of this commitment can be summed up in three presuppositions that are rarely articulated but drive much, if not all, of American foreign policy:
1. The world is to be shaped.
2. The United States is to do the shaping.
3. The values to which the world must conform are strangely co-extensive with those the United States happens to embrace at a given moment.
Ordinarily, Bacevich is too polite to mention the fourth Washington rule: The killing and dying are to be performed by others. I am not so restrained. Political leaders, including the president need to ask, and to be asked, about their reticence regarding actual military service.
Permitting the sundry experts who populate our universities, think tanks and, increasingly, our national security establishment to invoke "other priorities" as a sufficient justification for some combination of arrogance, sloth and cowardice lets them, and us, off too easily. More important, they have little ability to consider the possible damage done to those we ask to kill, and die.
During the past 13 years, the United States has had significant military involvement in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. There are active drone campaigns in Pakistan and Yemen, and we just avoided intervening in Syria. This is not the place to discuss the wisdom, or lack thereof, of any of those individual interventions, but it does clarify the problem: When immersed in a virtually constant state of semi-war, it is nearly impossible to view one's own military service as an isolated "interruption" of an otherwise "normal" life.
Military service becomes routinized for a large cohort of the working and lower-middle classes, and they receive almost no effective reintegration into a normal social environment. When the "recovery" from one deployment is the preparation for another, there exists little likelihood of fully rejoining a normal support structure. It is unsurprising that those separated from such structures are more likely to exceed the limits of acceptable behavior, with tragic results for themselves and those around them.
As a country, we must learn to practice extreme skepticism toward those political leaders who place excessive faith in the use of military force as a solution. Even in those instances where military action appears justified, the empirical data indicate that even qualified success is unlikely, and we should vigorously question those who support such approaches. Voters need to understand that the costs of war extend far beyond dollars and casualties, dangerously stretching the soldiers' and the nation's moral fabric, even when it does not quite tear."
http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/U-S-state-of-semi-war-takes-toll-on-military-5377563.php
Phillip Hatfield [Op-Ed]
"The recent (and welcome) conclusion of the court-martial of Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair provides an opportunity to reflect on military discipline and sexual misconduct. I will not repeat the disturbing statistics, but no one disputes that there appears to have been a substantial increase in various forms of sexual misbehavior over the past decade. While the individuals responsible should be prosecuted and, if convicted, punished for their crimes, such individual resolutions should not prevent us from considering systemic causes.
One of these causes involves the relatively recent acceleration of the growth in a key cultural difference that has driven the United States: our commitment to maintaining the United States in a constant state of what commentator Andrew Bacevich calls "semi-war." The central tenets of this commitment can be summed up in three presuppositions that are rarely articulated but drive much, if not all, of American foreign policy:
1. The world is to be shaped.
2. The United States is to do the shaping.
3. The values to which the world must conform are strangely co-extensive with those the United States happens to embrace at a given moment.
Ordinarily, Bacevich is too polite to mention the fourth Washington rule: The killing and dying are to be performed by others. I am not so restrained. Political leaders, including the president need to ask, and to be asked, about their reticence regarding actual military service.
Permitting the sundry experts who populate our universities, think tanks and, increasingly, our national security establishment to invoke "other priorities" as a sufficient justification for some combination of arrogance, sloth and cowardice lets them, and us, off too easily. More important, they have little ability to consider the possible damage done to those we ask to kill, and die.
During the past 13 years, the United States has had significant military involvement in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. There are active drone campaigns in Pakistan and Yemen, and we just avoided intervening in Syria. This is not the place to discuss the wisdom, or lack thereof, of any of those individual interventions, but it does clarify the problem: When immersed in a virtually constant state of semi-war, it is nearly impossible to view one's own military service as an isolated "interruption" of an otherwise "normal" life.
Military service becomes routinized for a large cohort of the working and lower-middle classes, and they receive almost no effective reintegration into a normal social environment. When the "recovery" from one deployment is the preparation for another, there exists little likelihood of fully rejoining a normal support structure. It is unsurprising that those separated from such structures are more likely to exceed the limits of acceptable behavior, with tragic results for themselves and those around them.
As a country, we must learn to practice extreme skepticism toward those political leaders who place excessive faith in the use of military force as a solution. Even in those instances where military action appears justified, the empirical data indicate that even qualified success is unlikely, and we should vigorously question those who support such approaches. Voters need to understand that the costs of war extend far beyond dollars and casualties, dangerously stretching the soldiers' and the nation's moral fabric, even when it does not quite tear."
http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/U-S-state-of-semi-war-takes-toll-on-military-5377563.php
My Father did one tour in Korea and retired after his 2nd tour in Vietnam. After his 2nd tour in Vietnam he and my mother divorced, he changed his name, his personality, and remarried. This “new man “ was not the man I knew. He wasn’t mean, reclusive, or stoic, just different. At his funeral, I was told that he volunteered for the 2nd tour in Nam because he couldn’t cope and “your father died back in the war, it just took him this long to lay down.”
They used to call it 'shell shock.' PTSD is nothing new.
I live with a guy who has it, and it explains so much of his disdain for the US military.
I live with a guy who has it, and it explains so much of his disdain for the US military.
A long but excellent article:
A Short History of PTSD: From Thermopylae to Hue
Soldiers Have Always Had A Disturbing Reaction To War
Article Reprint Date, January 1991
BY STEVE BENTLEY
See:
http://www.vva.org/archive/TheVeteran/2005_03/feature_HistoryPTSD.htm
A Short History of PTSD: From Thermopylae to Hue
Soldiers Have Always Had A Disturbing Reaction To War
Article Reprint Date, January 1991
BY STEVE BENTLEY
See:
http://www.vva.org/archive/TheVeteran/2005_03/feature_HistoryPTSD.htm
A brief history of PTSD: The evolution of our understanding
Post-traumatic stress disorder is a relatively new label for a condition as old as combat itself
American Military University
By Joshua A. Jones
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a relatively new label for a condition that has plagued combat veterans throughout the history of warfare. Looking at the evolution of our understanding of PTSD helps us to learn how we can better support individuals who are affected by it.
Symptoms demonstrative of the deteriorating psychological state of troops can be found in accounts from the Battle of Marathon (490 B.C.) and the infamous Spartan stand at Thermopylae. A 14th century treatise was even uncovered wherein a knight instructs young soldiers on how to defeat the melancholy and stress associated with combat hardships.
Military doctors made the first concerted attempts to categorize and diagnose the manifestations of acute combat stress for which Johannes Hofer championed the term “nostalgia” in his 1688 medical dissertation. Through the Seven Years War, the symptoms were believed to be associated with soldiers’ longing to return home and unrelated to actual battlefield experience.
Military physicians were barely able to discharge the most severe cases of psychological breakdown during the first few years of the American Civil War. Sadly, most afflicted troops were corralled into train cars with the names of their home towns or states pinned to their clothing. Others were left to wander the countryside until they succumbed to exposure. The number of these wayward veterans was sufficient to prompt a public outcry that led to the establishment of the first American military hospital for the insane in 1863, where patients were expected to remain until they could be claimed by a family member.
Jacob Mendes Da Costa first described “disorderly action of the heart” during a lecture on cardiac strain in 1874. His original explanation of the condition was based on his observations of soldiers during the Civil War. Physicians were merely trying to explain in etiological terms what they were observing in veterans: increased pulse rate and blood pressure, breathlessness, palpitations, dizziness, and fatigue. This led to the condition becoming colloquially known as “soldier’s heart.”
Modern war casualties
Not surprisingly, the uniquely brutal nature of trench warfare during the First World War resulted in a significant number of psychological casualties. However, Western commanders seemed oblivious to any instances of combat stress. Researchers of the era attributed the condition to the new weaponry of war; namely large-caliber artillery and explosives. The unfounded belief that the impact of shells produced concussions capable of disrupting neural function birthed the term “shell shock.”
Still under the impression that the condition only afflicted men of weak character, physicians contended that the solution was to develop more thorough military entrance screening processes, particularly in sifting through draftees to mediate the potential for emotional breakdown. With the aid of psychiatric testing, the military rejected some five million men from service on this presumption.
Of the 800,000 American troops who actually saw combat during the Second World War, 37.5 percent displayed such severe psychological symptoms that they were permanently discharged.
Since obviously it's not that so many men of the Greatest Generation were not encumbered by a weak character, the military adopted a subtle change in terminology that birthed the practice of describing wartime stress reactions with euphemistic language. Ergo, this stigma-laced condition was subsequently referred to as “battle fatigue” or “combat exhaustion.”
By the time the United States intervened in Korea, the humanity of combat stress had been almost completely removed and its perceived seriousness diminished. Those displaying symptoms of traumatic reactions were said to have suffered from “operational exhaustion,” which further distanced observers from the reality of the disorder. One-quarter of all soldiers who saw combat during the Korean War were classified as psychiatric casualties.
It is no longer a topic of debate that the fighting during the Vietnam War was demonstrably more intense than was ever experienced in previous American conflicts. As the war progressed and the public began to question its legitimacy, instances of psychological breakdown increased.
The American Psychiatric Association first codified post-traumatic stress disorder and included it in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders III in 1980. The oft-cited National Vietnam Veterans’ Readjustment Study concluded that nearly one-third of Vietnam veterans have had PTSD at some point in their lives.
Researchers have estimated that about 30 percent of the 2.5 million troops who have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from PTSD. The psychological effects of combat have long been a silent plague throughout the country, crippling families and robbing communities of their greatest citizens. Suicide is now the leading cause of death among active duty service members. This is a heart-wrenching tragedy.
What lies ahead
With America’s latest global campaign, the two longest wars in its history, nearing an end, we take stock. We bury our dead, patch our wounds, and begin the process of healing. It is now that we begin to recognize the social problems that were hidden for so many years behind yellow ribbons and gun smoke. At the end of any given day in the United States, 53 veterans have died while awaiting a decision on their VA disability claims, 22 of them by suicide, while more than 300,000 sleep on the streets and in shelters throughout the land they gave so much to defend.
Our modern understanding of PTSD and its effects put us in a position to truly help those who are afflicted. As we enjoy a time of relative peace in the developed world, it is important that we do not forget our veterans or the effects of their service that can persist long after the end of hostilities.
This encompasses all aspects of life, including education. Many institutions of higher learning are making a concerted effort to support veterans, particularly those with PTSD. In my experience at American Military University, I found that support for active and veteran service members is ingrained in the culture. The faculty is aware of PTSD and empowered to offer course extensions and other flexible options that accommodate military students.
About the author
Joshua A. Jones is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan as an enlisted infantryman. He is the author of The Warrior’s Journey: From Conflict to Finding Peace. He served on the Officer Board of the Student Veterans of America chapter at American Military University, where he received his BA in Criminal Justice. Joshua is currently pursuing graduate studies in Emergency & Disaster Management.
http://www.military1.com/army/article/405058-a-brief-history-of-ptsd-the-evolution-of-our-understanding
Post-traumatic stress disorder is a relatively new label for a condition as old as combat itself
American Military University
By Joshua A. Jones
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a relatively new label for a condition that has plagued combat veterans throughout the history of warfare. Looking at the evolution of our understanding of PTSD helps us to learn how we can better support individuals who are affected by it.
Symptoms demonstrative of the deteriorating psychological state of troops can be found in accounts from the Battle of Marathon (490 B.C.) and the infamous Spartan stand at Thermopylae. A 14th century treatise was even uncovered wherein a knight instructs young soldiers on how to defeat the melancholy and stress associated with combat hardships.
Military doctors made the first concerted attempts to categorize and diagnose the manifestations of acute combat stress for which Johannes Hofer championed the term “nostalgia” in his 1688 medical dissertation. Through the Seven Years War, the symptoms were believed to be associated with soldiers’ longing to return home and unrelated to actual battlefield experience.
Military physicians were barely able to discharge the most severe cases of psychological breakdown during the first few years of the American Civil War. Sadly, most afflicted troops were corralled into train cars with the names of their home towns or states pinned to their clothing. Others were left to wander the countryside until they succumbed to exposure. The number of these wayward veterans was sufficient to prompt a public outcry that led to the establishment of the first American military hospital for the insane in 1863, where patients were expected to remain until they could be claimed by a family member.
Jacob Mendes Da Costa first described “disorderly action of the heart” during a lecture on cardiac strain in 1874. His original explanation of the condition was based on his observations of soldiers during the Civil War. Physicians were merely trying to explain in etiological terms what they were observing in veterans: increased pulse rate and blood pressure, breathlessness, palpitations, dizziness, and fatigue. This led to the condition becoming colloquially known as “soldier’s heart.”
Modern war casualties
Not surprisingly, the uniquely brutal nature of trench warfare during the First World War resulted in a significant number of psychological casualties. However, Western commanders seemed oblivious to any instances of combat stress. Researchers of the era attributed the condition to the new weaponry of war; namely large-caliber artillery and explosives. The unfounded belief that the impact of shells produced concussions capable of disrupting neural function birthed the term “shell shock.”
Still under the impression that the condition only afflicted men of weak character, physicians contended that the solution was to develop more thorough military entrance screening processes, particularly in sifting through draftees to mediate the potential for emotional breakdown. With the aid of psychiatric testing, the military rejected some five million men from service on this presumption.
Of the 800,000 American troops who actually saw combat during the Second World War, 37.5 percent displayed such severe psychological symptoms that they were permanently discharged.
Since obviously it's not that so many men of the Greatest Generation were not encumbered by a weak character, the military adopted a subtle change in terminology that birthed the practice of describing wartime stress reactions with euphemistic language. Ergo, this stigma-laced condition was subsequently referred to as “battle fatigue” or “combat exhaustion.”
By the time the United States intervened in Korea, the humanity of combat stress had been almost completely removed and its perceived seriousness diminished. Those displaying symptoms of traumatic reactions were said to have suffered from “operational exhaustion,” which further distanced observers from the reality of the disorder. One-quarter of all soldiers who saw combat during the Korean War were classified as psychiatric casualties.
It is no longer a topic of debate that the fighting during the Vietnam War was demonstrably more intense than was ever experienced in previous American conflicts. As the war progressed and the public began to question its legitimacy, instances of psychological breakdown increased.
The American Psychiatric Association first codified post-traumatic stress disorder and included it in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders III in 1980. The oft-cited National Vietnam Veterans’ Readjustment Study concluded that nearly one-third of Vietnam veterans have had PTSD at some point in their lives.
Researchers have estimated that about 30 percent of the 2.5 million troops who have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from PTSD. The psychological effects of combat have long been a silent plague throughout the country, crippling families and robbing communities of their greatest citizens. Suicide is now the leading cause of death among active duty service members. This is a heart-wrenching tragedy.
What lies ahead
With America’s latest global campaign, the two longest wars in its history, nearing an end, we take stock. We bury our dead, patch our wounds, and begin the process of healing. It is now that we begin to recognize the social problems that were hidden for so many years behind yellow ribbons and gun smoke. At the end of any given day in the United States, 53 veterans have died while awaiting a decision on their VA disability claims, 22 of them by suicide, while more than 300,000 sleep on the streets and in shelters throughout the land they gave so much to defend.
Our modern understanding of PTSD and its effects put us in a position to truly help those who are afflicted. As we enjoy a time of relative peace in the developed world, it is important that we do not forget our veterans or the effects of their service that can persist long after the end of hostilities.
This encompasses all aspects of life, including education. Many institutions of higher learning are making a concerted effort to support veterans, particularly those with PTSD. In my experience at American Military University, I found that support for active and veteran service members is ingrained in the culture. The faculty is aware of PTSD and empowered to offer course extensions and other flexible options that accommodate military students.
About the author
Joshua A. Jones is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan as an enlisted infantryman. He is the author of The Warrior’s Journey: From Conflict to Finding Peace. He served on the Officer Board of the Student Veterans of America chapter at American Military University, where he received his BA in Criminal Justice. Joshua is currently pursuing graduate studies in Emergency & Disaster Management.
http://www.military1.com/army/article/405058-a-brief-history-of-ptsd-the-evolution-of-our-understanding
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