Healing Combat Trauma

Quotable Quotes -- Former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley on PTSD

Former U.S. senator Bill Bradley (D-NJ), NBA Hall of Famer, and Rhodes Scholar, had this to say in a commentary published in Vanity Fair today about PTSD. The occasion was the premiere of the Tom Hanks/Steven Spielberg/HBO miniseries, "The Pacific," about U.S. Marines in the Pacific during World War II, also getting screened privately at the White House today.

Bradley thinks there are several things that the president and the first lady should be thinking about while they watch the miniseries. One of those topics is PTSD. Says Bradley:

"Both The Pacific and Band of Brothers focus on the horrors of the war and the emotional trauma that a soldier or Marine can endure. P.T.S.D. should be treated with as much seriousness as a gunshot wound. If the president is going to send tens of thousands more troops [into combat], he also needs to consider the emotional payload. With suicide rates up among veterans -- accounting for 20 percent* of all suicides among Americans -- the government must dedicate more money to support programs for our returning troops."

Editor's note: If 8,000 veterans kill themselves every year, conservatively, and the national suicide rate is close to 34,000, according to the NIMH, the percentage of suicides who are veterans is closer to *25%. They also represent almost 50% of the homeless population. So yes, please, let's do that...and sooner rather than later...

(The full commentary is linked here.)

Happy Blogiversary -- We're Four (4)!

Just a quick note to say, it's amazing to think that this blog/website was begun four years ago today. It feels like several lifetimes ago. So much has changed in the landscape. When we first began blogging about PTSD and combat veterans, there was literally nothing out there...at least on the Web. Now, thanks in part to our societal conscience/guilt over maltreatment of the Vietnam vets, and their amazing longsuffering with that poor and undeserved treatment, we're finally -- as a society -- at least paying attention to the topic. Soldiers (using the term generically) goes to war -- and often comes back with PTSD.

As a nation (and other nations around the world face this same problem, but we're writing from America), we have to address the issue of what happens after combat...and we have to provide for our veterans and their families so that they don't fall through the cracks into suicide, desperation, homelessness, violence and despair. It's a fine line, though, between doing for people, and helping them do for themselves. It's doubtful that what vets really want is a handout; it's much more likely that what they want is a fair shake. They've given and sacrificed for this country and for us; in turn, we need to meet their very real needs and that of their families. Let's not leave combat veterans hanging; they deserve our attention and our care. As a nation, we're fortunately beginning to come around to that. Whether the VA is an obstacle to that, or part of the solution, remains to be seen. Let's hope for the best: that America will care for those who have borne the battle with the best of what we have. That's what they gave; it's only fair that we reciprocate in kind.

How to Use This Website

In reality, it's probably pretty self-explanatory, but if it isn't, here are some of the concepts.

Posts:

The blog posts are published in chronological order, most recent first. BUT, if you want to read MORE on any particular topic, head to the upper left hand corner of the blog and see all the different categories. If you click on any one of those topics, it will take you to the collection of articles written on that topic, dating back to February of 2006, when this site began.

Books:

If you want to find a book to read about PTSD, the known good ones -- not just every book that's out there -- are listed in a column on the left hand side of the blog, sorted alphabetically by author (first name, not last name -- odd, I know, but it's a TypePad thing.)  Clicking on the title of any of those books takes you right to it on Amazon.com.

If you want to read a first person narrative of someone who fought in a conflict -- be it Vietnam, the first Gulf War, Iraq or Afghanistan -- those are in a column on the right hand side of the blog, separated by conflict.  Those books don't attempt to propose therapeutic solutions: they're just there to give first person accounts of what it was like to be there, something that helps the rest of us experience greater empathy and understanding for what the challenges are and were.

Experts:

If you want to find the name of a known, credible expert on PTSD, or aspects of combat trauma and/or PTSD, those are listed in a category called, no surprise, "Experts."  Periodically, over time, this category will be filled in with more listings, because it's somewhat constantly in flux.

Getting Help:

While much of this website is about broadening the definition of "getting help," if the help you need is specifically psychological, and it's an emergency, this is not the place to be. Call a crisis hotline, or speak with a trained mental health professional of your choosing. Help line numbers are listed below, cribbed directly from my friend Kathie Costos' blog, Wounded Times:

• Vietnam Veterans of America, Crisis Phone Number. Special Notice: If you are a veteran in emotional crisis and need help RIGHT NOW, call this toll-free number 1-800-273-8255, available 24/7, and tell them you are a veteran. All calls are confidential. http://www.vva.org/.
• Also, Veterans’ Crisis Intervention Hotline: 1-888-899-9377. A Crisis Intervention Hotline has been established by the VA Heartland Network to assist veterans who may be dealing with a mental health crisis or difficult issue in their lives. The hotline will also aid family members or friends of veterans who need help in assisting a veteran in crisis.

Shneidman and Camus -- Suicide as "the Fundamental Question" of Philosophy

"Suicide is up in the military once again, and it's also up among veterans -- those who have been deployed previously. While "National Mental Health Awareness Month" may still be a few months off -- in May -- but it's interesting to note what existential philosopher Albert Camus wrote in his book, "The Myth of Sisyphus":

"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy."

And also humanity, we might add...because it figures in there, too.

Dr. Edwin Shneidman, the compassionate genius considered the "father" of suicidology, who sadly passed away a few months ago, wrote about how suicide is a narrowing of the distressed person's field of vision, until they can see only two options: staying or going. Without broadening the options to three or more, the way that healthier people think, a distressed person may vacillate between these two options until the pressure in their life mounts, and they can only "see" the one option, and their timing suddenly becomes a desperate "now."

(Clearly, suicide is an event with much collateral damage, particularly to those around the person in pain, who can have an understandably extraordinarily difficult time coming to terms with how or why that decision was made. Read Shneidman; he understands. In one poignant passage, quoted here, he describes the mind of the suicidal person closing down in restricted vision until, not that the victim doesn't care, that he or she can no longer see who else is in the picture, so great is their personal pain.)

While there's much material on this website about suicide, particularly here -- and also help numbers to call if you're in distress, linked here -- I mention the Camus quote to give a certain backhanded respect to the topic as a whole. Many times people claim, rightly or wrongly, that suicide is the quintessentially weak move, "the coward's way out," reserved for those who can't, or won't, face their problems, others say judgmentally or even sometimes accurately. Yet for those who are suffering greatly, and contemplate it periodically -- as many honestly do -- it's "nice" to see someone with real cultural weight give the question some credence or respectability as a topic. To paraphrase Shakespeare, "to stay or not to stay" may turn out to be the real question, after all...

What the Camus quote implies is that even robustly mentally healthy people, if they're philosophically inclined, have dwelt on or wrestled with at least the abstract reality of the question. (Ironically,  Shneidman's obituary in the L.A. Times, linked here, mentions the same quote, and that Shneidman was a fan of Camus.) If we combine their perspectives imaginatively, true mental health might mean wrestling with the topic conceptually, but then enlarging the field of choices so that it doesn't have to become an option that is used. Could open discussions arise from removing the stigma around even broaching or discussing the topic? More on that later...

Editor's note: Cribbed directly from my friend Kathie Costos' blog, Wounded Times, here are the phone numbers and the information for veterans questioning suicide -- some of which support family members as well:

• Vietnam Veterans of America, Crisis Phone Number. Special Notice: If you are a veteran in emotional crisis and need help RIGHT NOW, call this toll-free number 1-800-273-8255, available 24/7, and tell them you are a veteran. All calls are confidential. http://www.vva.org/.
• Also, Veterans’ Crisis Intervention Hotline: 1-888-899-9377. A Crisis Intervention Hotline has been established by the VA Heartland Network to assist veterans who may be dealing with a mental health crisis or difficult issue in their lives. The hotline will also aid family members or friends of veterans who need help in assisting a veteran in crisis.