PTSD name change pushed by more

by Chaplain Kathie

They face bullets and bombs, watch friends die, risk their lives everyday for a year at a time, endure no sleep, lousy food when they get to eat, spend their days worrying about what is going on where they are at the same time they worry about what is going on back home, yet some experts think they are so “thin skinned” changing a word will get them to go for help. Amazing.

MILITARY:
Taking the ‘disorder’ out of post-war stress
By Rick Rogers
For the North County Times
Posted: Friday, March 11, 2011
Soldier’s heart, shell shock, war neurosis, combat fatigue —- and now, especially for the last decade in Iraq and Afghanistan, post traumatic stress disorder.

Through the ages all have denoted the deleterious affects of combat on mental health that, depending on the numbers you believe, afflicts 15 to 40 percent of all combat veterans.

Whatever the name, those affected by it typically experience intrusive thoughts, intense startle responses and often attendant depression and self-medication.
The million-dollar question is, how can more troops be prodded toward seeking help?

Some in the veteran community suggest a marketing makeover. Specifically, dropping the “D” for “disorder” from PTSD nomenclature to lower the stigma quotient.

“When you tell anybody they have a disorder, they look at it as an emotional weakness of some sort,” said Bill Rider, president and co-founder of the Oceanside-based American Combat Veterans of War. “It is not a disorder.”

ACVOW counsels and debriefs Camp Pendleton Marines and sailors returning from war. Its office on the Marine base has been a fixture for years.

“It certainly is something that is going to happen to anybody who sees any amount of combat: exchanging fire with the enemy; your friends dying; you killing people, the enemy. It is going to happen,” explained Rider, who fought at Khe Sahn and has admitted to having combat stress himself.

The last decade? The term was used way back in 1978 and addressed Vietnam veterans but “experts” seem to think this is all related to Iraq and Afghanistan. The DAV commissioned a study, The Etiology of Combat_Related Post Traumatic Stress Disorders by Jim Goodwin Psy.D. In it he clearly said that they already knew of 500,000 Vietnam veterans with PTSD. Why do so many people want to act as if this is all new?

The best way to get veterans into the help they need is to get them to understand this attacked them and it wasn’t caused by them. Next, make damn sure when they want to get help, it is waiting for them and not making them wait for it. Make sure they don’t have to have more stress piled on top of their shoulders when they cannot work and can’t pay their bills because their claim is tied up. Changing the term has not worked since the beginning of this country and a word alone will not help them.

This part is the most troubling of all.

“Disorder” needs striking from PTSD, because only a sociopath could avoid post-traumatic stress after combat. If its normal, how can it be a disorder?

So says “Bart Billings, a Carlsbad psychologist and retired Army colonel who runs the longest ongoing combat stress conference in the world.” In other words, is it possible a psychologist is saying the rest of the troops without PTSD are sociopaths?

The common factor with most veterans living with PTSD is that they were able to feel things more deeply. They were among the people others went to for help knowing they cared. The families tell stories of how they were like that all their lives then changed after combat. Compassion opens the door to PTSD. Some think that if they are compassionate, they are not brave but that is because they do not look at the actions. Compassion does little good without the courage to act. Feeling it deeper makes them different than others but it does not make the others “sociopaths” if they do not have PTSD. Age plays a big part as well. The younger they are when exposed to combat, the less able they are to recover from it, but the military wants them young to “mold” them.

After trauma, there is shock. Things get all of us after trauma. The shock usually wears off and sleep returns, a more hopeful outlook comes back and while the memory of the trauma may still remain, it does not take over every life. Usually within 30 days, life returns closer to normal. For PTSD, it does not go away and they cannot “get over it” anymore than they can just go back to the way they were before. Remember, this is with all types of traumatic event and not continued exposures to more events or the constant threat of death. For the military, it is one piled on top of another. Considering the average, most used rate of PTSD, is one out of three, we need to remember that this figure is used for one event.

IED threats down every road in Iraq and Afghanistan make them on edge every time they get into their vehicles. This includes their personal one back home.

Night attacks break up their sleep and puts them on constant alert. This comes in the middle of the night when they hear the slightest sound “safe” back home.

Seeing someone die or blown up is not about to let go of their mind. Flashbacks of all of it come home during the day as well as in their dreams.

For most, while they are able to focus on more threats, what is happening inside of them is pushed out of the way. They end up discovering just how much of the combat came home with them when they least expect it.

Taking a word away will not change any of this. Suggesting everyone without PTSD is a “sociopath” won’t help either.