Healing Combat Trauma

News from Hell before Breakfast: Journalists, War Trauma and PTSD

"I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are. If I killed them all there would be news from Hell before breakfast." -- attributed, perhaps erroneously, to Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman.

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A different quote:

"On Thursday, June 26th, I witnessed the immediate aftermath of an Al-Qaeda suicide bomb attack.  Several dozen people lost their lives... children, old men, civilians, police, and military men.  The scene was horrific beyond words, even for someone like me who has a fairly high threshold for such things.

I found it nearly impossible to look through the viewfinder.  What I saw was abhorrently graphic, yet far too important for the world to ignore.  I present images that provide an uncensored view of a terrible event, and some small measure of dignity to those who lost their lives."

-- Zoriah, international humanitarian photographer, whose gripping images from that event were later censored by the U.S. military, and he was evicted from his embed assignment with the Marines. (The link to the post where he talks about those images, and shows them, is here.)

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PTSD from being a combat journalist of photographer, embedded or otherwise:  Not everyone who's exposed to combat trauma develops PTSD, as we know.  Recently, Kimberly Dozier, CBS correspondent and author of Breathing the Fire, says she didn't develop it from her horrific near-death incident in Iraq in May of 2006, though ironically -- according to Dozier -- almost everyone she interacts with believes thatshe must have.  (See article to that effect by Dozier, linked here.)  However...many do; and for others, the signs and symptoms take time to manifest themselves. 

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Journalists bear witness, both to some of the most savage atrocities of wartime, though without the training and the mindset of combatants, and also to the suffering of the survivors, military and civilian.  Says one photographer who served in Vietnam:

It has been very difficult for me [to recount some of his memories from the past] as it has brought back many of the horrible nightmares that I had thought that I had finally put away. It did get them out in the open and off my chest so to speak and now my family now knows why I sometimes have to take those walks out into the woods alone to just get away. Hard to explain. I do have severe survival guilt as I have lost far to many friends in combat in up close and personal confrontations. I have many photos of me smiling and yes there were many good times. However; there were enough bad times to more than compensate for the good ones. I have learned to cope with this new world that I came home to only because I still feel a great need to help my fellow veterans. We 'Nam veterans are all but forgotten in my eyes.

Two significant resources: Dr. Anthony Feinstein's work, and the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma.

Two excellent books:

Dangerous Lives: War, and the Men and Women Who Report It, by Anthony Feinstein (2002); and Journalists under Fire: The Psychological Hazards of Covering War, by Anthony Feinstein. (2006).  (Recommended by Jonathan Shay, M.D., Ph.D., noted PTSD expert.)  Shay wrote: "the first and only book about the occupational [psychological] hazards of being a war correspondent.  Published in Canada, will come out in the US next year from Johns Hopkins UP with a new chapter on embeds."

Dr. Anthony Feinstein is a professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto and a neuropsychiatrist at Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences Centre in Toronto. He is an expert on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in war journalists. Feinstein received a 2001 Guggenheim Fellowship to pursue his research. Dr. Anthony Feinstein's bio is linked here.  Much better bio, linked here.

For reporters: War, Journalism and Stress: The Self-Assessment Test, linked here. (General description of the test, linked here.)

What Feinstein has to say:

More than anything, says Feinstein, he’s learned that, “War is not good for journalists. They suffer from it.”

Specifically, they suffer post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse and anxiety disorders. One in five journalists, over the course of a long (15-plus-year) career, endures significant PTSD, says Feinstein. That means, among other things, bad dreams, flashbacks, numbness, an overly sensitive startle response and an inability to get close to others emotionally. One in four experiences depression. “And a number drink very heavily as well,” says Feinstein, “but I don’t know how many, because I never know for sure what they’re telling me.”

The most surprising revelation of the research for Feinstein? “I didn’t realize that the journalists were in such great danger. You see them when they report the news: cool, collected, with everything seemingly going on behind them. But these people are really right in the middle of it all.”

He is particularly sympathetic to still photographers. More than anyone, he says, these professionals have no choice but to get into the thick of things to do their jobs well.

The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, located on the campus of the University of Washington in Seattle, is a particularly good, targeted resource for journalists about reporting and trauma: both externally reporting, and internally experiencing trauma from reporting in war zones.  Click here to look through their extensive offerings, which are really superb.

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Who's the handsome young man in the photo? 

That's Robert W. "Grif" Griffin.  Griffin says, "I was a combat photographer with the 1st Cavalry Division Airmobile from 1966 to 1968 and 1970. I was in country [in Vietnam] as a photographer from 1966 to 1968, and back again in 1970."  (He was shot down near Quan Loi in 1970.)  He adds that he "spent 20 years in the Army mostly as a photojournalist/motion picture and still photographer."

According to Griffin, "the photographer who took the photo is Jere L. Smith, a fellow combat photographer and a Specialist E5 at the time. We were both assigned to the 13th Signal Battalion, which was part of the 1st Cavalry Division Airmobile."  At the time the photo was taken, Griffin was duplicating some slides for his Command for a Division briefing that was to take place in several locations at the same time: hence, the dupes.

Books Fall Open, We Fall In: Reading to Better Understand the Vietnam War and Its Veterans

The kindly and indulgent boyfriend, GuvBoy, left for the local library book sale with instructions to purchase anything that looked good about the Vietnam war and several other blog-related topics. As a former journalist and all-around smart person, he knows how to figure that out, so I knew I was in good hands.  As it turns out, he returned with some good ones, that seem to have been lost to history.  So I thought I would point them out here, in case they help anyone else who's interested in digging deeper into what went on and what the combatants experienced. 

(In case it's never been clear what orientation the categories of books in the various columns flanking this blog have, here's the breakdown:

The column to the right here on this blog lists various books of poetry about war, any war; followed by a section of all sorts of excellent first-person narratives about various wars, the better to give us an understanding of what veterans went through.  Those first-person narratives are organized by war, to make it more self-explanatory.  The column to the left here lists therapeutic resources for dealing with combat trauma up on top; and various miscellaneous things that get mentioned on the blog further down).

For Vietnam-era veterans who want their families (i.e., children and grandchildren) to better understand what the war was like, I'm still recommending "Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans Movement," by Gerald Nicosia, because while he's talking about the veterans movement, in 700 pages, he's capturing all sorts of history of the era and feelings for and against.  The book is actually pretty neutrally, historically written, and it's a very good resource.  I've blogged about it earlier, here.  Except for its oversight of the extremely impressive (to me, anyway) Lawrence Kolb, M.D., I can't say enough good things about Nicosia's book.  There's a fascinating wealth of information about the legitimization of the PTSD diagnosis in the book as well.

Here are a few others:

Stanley Karnow's Vietnam: A History, is also good.  The cover calls it "The first complete account of Vietnam at war" -- maybe it should actually say, the first complete account of Americans at war in Vietnam -- so it has its place.  It was written as the companion to the long-ago PBS series of the same name.

Plus three new finds, though, thanks to the pleasantly-disposed boyfriend and his handfull of small bills:

"Long Time Passing: Vietnam and the Haunted Generation," by Myra McPherson; "Healing from the War: Trauma and Transformation after Vietnam," by Arthur Egendorf; and "Vietnam: the Valor and the Sorrow" (from the home front to the front lines in words and pictures), by Thomas D. Boettcher.

Each of these books has a particular reason why it's good and worth perusing.  McPherson was a Washington Post and New York Times reporter who carried on 500 interviews with veterans and others to get her material; Egendorf, who Nicosia writes about in his history, was a Harvard graduate, Vietnam vet and psychologist who became one of the founders of the first rap groups to help veterans deal with the personal fallout from the war; and Boettcher was a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy who served in Vietnam in the press corps.  His book has more than 500 photographers, many never before published, which adds greatly to its interest (it's also very well-written and well-paced, not deadly.) 

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Additionally, we've already blogged about Lori Sekala's great bibliography on PTSD and war in the blog post entitled, "A Good Librarian is a Wonderful Resource," linked here.  (Sekala is the collection management librarian at the U.S. Army War College library).  But here's something we haven't talked about yet -- possibly THE definitive bibliography on books about the Vietnam war, to better understand the experience.  It's linked here.  Enjoy :-)

Speaking of Catharsis: One Magnificent Quote

Catharsis:

The word comes from Greek katharsis, from kathairein, to purge, from katharos, pure. 

Among other definitions, "catharsis" means: "a purifying or figurative cleansing of the emotions, especially pity and fear..."; "a release of emotional tension, as after an overwhelming experience, that restores or refreshes the spirit;" and "a technique used to relieve tension and anxiety by bringing repressed feelings and fears to consciousness; also, "The therapeutic result of this process."

Catharsis is the unspoken theme, hope and dream for veterans on this blog, but periodically we make it more explicit, as we did here, in a blog entry about art therapy's surprisingly potential for purging combat trauma and PTSD in veterans.

At virtually the same moment I was posting this, friend and apparent psychic twin on all things veteran, Chris Lombardi, was posting this remarkable quote on her blog.  Lombardi is writing a book for the University of California Press on soldiers and dissent (watch for it), and here she is quoting Walter Kirn in the New York Times, reviewing The March, which Kirn called "E.L. Doctorow's heart-squeezing fictional account of Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman's fiery, rapacious last campaign through the cities and countryside of the Confederate South". 

The quote that Lombardi pulls from Kirn offers a stunning perspective on how great catharsis can really be, when veterans (and others) decide that "the only way out [of their suffering] is through":

The rampant destructiveness of Sherman’s march is, of course, the stuff of high school textbooks, but what isn’t so obvious is the way that destruction transfigures and transforms, pulverizing established human communities and forcing the victims to recombine in new ones. Inside the churning belly of Doctorow’s beast, individuals shed their old identities, ally themselves with former foes, develop unexpected romantic bonds and even seem to alter racially. Yes, war is hell, and “The March” affirms this truth, but it also says something that most war novels leave out: hell is not the end of the world. Indeed, it’s by learning to live in hell, and through it, that people renew the world. They have no choice.

From the blog post, "What We Write About When We Write About War,' by Chris Lombardi, at her blog, Incredible Panic Rules, linked here.

Military Sexual Trauma: A Sexual Violence That Injures the Soul

The other day a reader wrote to comment on her own experience of military sexual trauma:

"From my sorry experience, military sexual assault is a predatory crime of opportunity. ...  Victims are quite disposable... few perps are ever tried in court.  Yet the victim gets quickly processed out as a defective nuisance.  You suddenly become jobless & homeless for daring to report, no matter how good your daily job performance. The victim is subhuman and utterly alone and reviled, while the predator gets a promotion.  This is probably why military rape creates more PTSD cases percentage-wise than does combat.  In combat at least you are scooped up into the bosom of your band of brothers." 

"A couple of military stats," she continues: "Sexual assault is more likely in a command that encourages/allows harassing/misogynist behavior," and "Fifty percent of perps have a prior history of violence upon entering the military -again OPPORTUNITY to observe and select their prey in close confines."  Yikes.  True? Not true?  Either way, it's a hideous experience for the unwilling victim.

That brought to mind some healing words of Britta Reque-Dragicevic, but first, the bracing truth: "Military sexual trauma is a crime, not a misfortune of war," writes Reque-Dragicevic in her book, Close to Home: A Soldier's Guide to Returning from War.  The e-book is available here for the very affordable price of $10.  Buy it :-)  Because it's a download, you can have it within minutes.The following is Reque-Dragicevic's thoughts on sexual trauma in war. 

As with the rest of her very worthwhile book, they are soothing, sane and reasonable, and will comfort the afflicted.  This book should be a must for veterans and their families; and at its very reasonable price would also make a thoughtful "Welcome Home, Veteran!" gift for veterans in your life or in your community.  She writes:

An increasingly common trauma far less talked [than PTSD] about is military sexual trauma—which is experiencing sexual assault or harassment while you are in the military. This is not just a women’s problem. In fact, the VA reports that fifty-five percent of women and thirty-eight percent of men in the military have experienced military sexual harassment. While military sexual trauma is more common in women, over half of all veterans with military sexual trauma are men.

War has historically seen an increase in sexual assault and rape incidents for both military and war-zone populations. It’s become more publicly recognized in war-zone civilian populations (mass gang rapes were widely reported during the Bosnian war and rape has traditionally been a way to violate an enemy population), but rarely do we hear about sexual assault among our own soldiers.

If you have experienced a sexual violation during war that has left you ‘just not feeling the same’ since, please know that you are not alone. Most victims of military sexual trauma will never report it. Whether or not you call it rape doesn’t matter. What happened to you wasn’t right and it wasn’t your fault; and no, you couldn’t have prevented or stopped it. Rape is always an issue of power, not sex. Unfortunately, rape in war happens too often as people deal with overwhelming feelings of god-like power, lowered inhibitions, excessive anger, lack of usual sexual release and the devaluation of human life—sexual force is often used with little outward consequence to the perpetrator. But the consequences to the victim are life-changing.

If this has happened to you, you may develop PTSD from this alone, but be too embarrassed or humiliated to tell anyone why. This may be the hardest part of your war experience to deal with and one that strangles you in secrecy, shame, and embarrassment. After all, with fellow survivors coming back with missing limbs and mental shock, how can having been sexually violated compare to that? No one would believe you, would they? What would loved ones think? Soldiers are supposed to be tough; how could you ever admit that you weren’t strong enough to keep someone from forcing sex on you? Yet, for you, what happened has become your war. A war that no one will ever know anything about.

Please stop. Stop and take a deep breath. Forget the fact that it was a war environment for a moment and realize that no matter where it happens, when, or to whom, being sexually violated always leaves a person feeling powerless, doubtful of themselves, uncertain, unable to believe it really happened, and feeling very, very small inside. Why? Because sexual assault is about taking away your power. Sex is our most intimate and most powerful interaction with another human being. And when someone overpowers us physically and enters our bodies without our consent, we are deeply ashamed and shocked at how powerless we were.

Sexual violence injures the soul. The shame, humiliation, loss of control, and shaken self-esteem affect both men and women even though each gender experiences them differently because of what we are conditioned to believe about our masculine or feminine roles in life.

Sexual violation impacts our self-image, sexuality, and our future, safe sexual experiences. The overwhelming sense of vulnerability and shame can lead to suicidal thoughts and actions.

For war survivors who have been violated by one of their own, the confusion and uncertainty, not to mention potential repercussions to your military career or even survival, lead most victims to never tell anyone. Keeping your mouth shut may be the only way to survive and get back home. But once you are home, please realize that if this has happened to you, you have been affected and it’s not just going to go away. It takes feeling safe to get yourself to the point where you can admit to someone that it happened. And for a lot of people, finding someone safe seems almost impossible.

Even if you tell no one else in your life, please call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673 or visit them online for an anonymous chat at www.rainn.org. You can remain anonymous, and at least you will be able to talk with someone who deals with this trauma every day and can start to give you the resources you need to find healing. The VA also reports that it has counselors at every hospital trained to assist veterans with this issue. You can also visit www.ncptsd.va.gov, search for “military sexual trauma”—and a number of fact sheets will come up where you can learn additional information.

Remember, what happened to you was a crime, not just a misfortune of war. The person who assaulted you did not have the right to do this to you under any circumstances.

One of the hardest parts about having been sexually traumatized can be sharing that information with a spouse or partner. It’s normal to worry about how they will accept you once they know what has happened and to wonder how it will impact your intimate life together. Even though this trauma may loom large before your eyes, your partner loves you for who you are—not just your ability to have sex. You may find far more love and acceptance than you imagine. You are still attractive, beautiful, desirable, virile, and your partner still longs to experience sexual intimacy with you. You may struggle with feeling that you are not worth loving which is one of the ways sexual violation diminishes your own sense of power. But feelings are not facts. You are a human being worth being loved, enjoyed, and you deserve to experience sexual intimacy in a safe and caring relationship.

Partners of sexual assault survivors may feel a sense of rage, powerlessness, guilt for not having been able to protect your loved one, and a natural reaction to want to get even with the person who has hurt the person you love. Counseling individually and as a couple can be a safe place to express what you are feeling. You can also call the Sexual Assault Hotline—it’s not just for survivors; they can assist family and friends.

Remember, as long as you don’t tell your partner what happened, he or she will have no way of knowing what you are feeling, worried about, remembering, or associating with your current sex life. You may have no desire to have sex because of the trauma, but how will your partner know that? If you don’t share, he or she may assume that they are no longer desirable and that you’ve lost interest. They may easily blame themselves or you. Don’t lose your relationship because you are too ashamed to share what happened. Seek a counselor who can help you decide how to share this information. Don’t shut out what may be the only true source of love and support in your life. Loving partners can be incredibly patient when it comes to sex and trauma, but you have to give them the chance to understand what you are going through.

If you have been sexually traumatized, it may seem that that experience now defines who you are. Shame, guilt, self-blame, denial, rage, depression, lack of self-worth, fear of being intimate again, aversion to being touched or approached without warning, doubts about whether or not you are still desirable, or if having been raped effects your sexual orientation (it doesn’t) are all normal reactions. Just remember the trauma is real and intimate, but you are not defined by what has happened to you. You are a whole person who has experienced vulnerability and powerlessness; but that experience did not change who you really are: still strong, still powerful, still in control and still able to move toward healing. Deciding to move toward healing may be the only justice you ever get for what happened. You owe it to yourself, your partner, and your children to make sure that this trauma does not take you away from them any more than it already has.

Talk to a counselor. Sexual trauma is humiliating, but counselors deal with it everyday. Nothing bad will happen to you by just talking. It doesn’t mean you have to take legal action or that everyone will find out. You are not alone. Don’t let the one who took your power from you keep it.

You deserve a lifetime of being sexually loved and enjoyed.

Reprinted with permission from Close to Home: A Soldier's Guide to Returning from War, by Britta Reque-Dragicevic.  The e-book is available here for the very affordable price of $10.  Buy it :-) 

Lisa Chedekel, Veteran Reporter on Veterans Issues, Allegedly to Take Courant Buyout

In the "Another One Bites the Dust " Dept., it's discouraging to learn that Lisa Chedekel, one of only a handful of truly great reporters on veterans issues – and by handful I really do mean, five or fewer -- is apparently taking a buyout offer from The Hartford Courant, the newspaper where she has reported for years, at least according on media-watcher blog, linked here.  (Sorry, Lisa, about the dismal, DMV-ish photo -- it's all I could find to identify you with to readers. )

 

This is particularly sad news for veterans, their families, and anyone else who wants to learn about the perils of their frequently inadequate mental health and treatments, because Chedekel, who specializes in what she calls "in-depth, old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting," has provided wonderful coverage of these topics over the years.  It’s disappointing to learn that Chedekel will be leaving the Courant, because it means one fewer voice covering this subject well; and perhaps no one to replace her who can do it nearly so well.

 

(There are others, of course, who do a great job covering veterans and mental health issues, but they are few and far between: The Washington Post's reporting duo of Anne Priest and Dana Hull, who did the seminal Walter Reed series; independent journalist Aaron Glantz, who's a new Rosalynn Carter fellow in mental health reporting this year;