PTSD diagnosis carries hope
I want to tell you about a new film that’s of interest to me and other veterans. It’s about the unseen injuries of combat: Post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD is not a new phenomenon, but it’s one that is being talked about more now than ever in recent memory. I know people’s eyes may glaze over, because we don’t like to talk about disorders, and especially disorders of the mind.
But PTSD is a risk factor for those of us who experience traumatic situations and events. As Dr. Frank Ochberg, a psychiatrist who’s led research into PTSD, explains, it happens to normal people reacting to things that are terribly abnormal.
And when the actual traumatic event has passed, it seems impossible to regain your former sense of normalcy. It’s like my friend, war correspondent Darrin Mortenson, said, if you’re back home or between tours but you just can’t wait to get back over to the fight, that might be a sign that what was once normal to you has changed in a very serious way. Some of the most common symptoms of PTSD are sudden, intrusive memories of terrifying events — memories that you wish would go away but won’t and which leave your heart racing; irritability; an inability to reconnect with loved ones; irrational fears; and hypervigilance. More information about PTSD can be found here: http://www.ptsdinfo.org/
Plenty of returning veterans are resilient and don’t succumb to PTSD, but others do — the levels of stress endured in war are different for everyone. And just because you might have PTSD doesn’t mean you’re not tough or strong or able to do your job – in fact, it takes a tough person to admit that they need help when they’re struck with this.
In his new DVD, “PTSD & Veterans,” Frank actually calls a PTSD diagnosis “hopeful,” because people who have PTSD alone have an excellent chance of going on to lead good lives. Coming from him, it should put a lot of people’s minds at ease. He and other therapists have been studying the disorder for at least three decades, and there are now so many techniques to pry this injury out of the psyche and deal with it directly — or indirectly — that a returning war veteran does not have to become the memory he or she fears, but instead can have control over it.
A bit about Frank Ochberg: He founded the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma; an organization called Gift From Within; the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies; PTSDinfo.org; and other organizations which work hard to end human cruelty — or at least make us all better people.
You can check out a portion of the video, or order a copy of the video here: http://www.giftfromwithin.org/html/video13.html#13
There’s so much known about these types of injuries now. So many therapists know how to deal with PTSD, and proper treatment can make the difference between someone who is broken and someone who will become whole once again.
Weekend Warriors? Not anymore.
Back when I was a lowly seaman, going to “drill” once a month in the Navy Reserves meant showing up on time, wearing the uniform sharply, standing very still at attention and saluting at the right time.
How things have changed.
Back then most of us spent our drill weekends shuffling paperwork and chatting up a shipmate or two in the halls. We tried to look important, arming ourselves with some documents or a clipboard in accordance with the orders of one lieutenant commander: “Mill about smartly when you mill about!” (He never was promoted further, by the way.)
And when the weekends were was over, it really was true — we wouldn’t see our fellow reservists until the next month, and sometimes not until the next year.
I know I spent a good chunk of my drill time shopping for my annual two-week “training” in the summer. Where should I go this year — Hawaii? Italy? France — yeah, baby!
“This isn’t a travel agency,” a lieutenant once told me. She coulda fooled me!
Then came then Persian Gulf war in 1991. That’s when a lot of reservists like me had to make the decision about whether the college money was worth the possibility of going to war.
Some bailed. In fact, many bailed.
I had told myself that I would stay in the reserves until it was no longer fun, and back then, it still was.
But by the time the peacekeeping efforts in Bosnia came along, and then the debacle in Somalia, another factor really built up our workload — the Internet. We no longer talked just once a month but pretty much every week — sometimes most nights and weekends — getting work done and creating more work.
The military also started taking physical exercise far more seriously (and still does). They really got pickier on who they brought in, and in a matter of a few years, they were a lot fewer Deadwood Joes with zero motivation and a lot more college grads with buns of steel — even among the enlisted ranks.
Still, we hadn’t yet gained what we reservists wanted most — the respect of the active duty. We still didn’t work directly with them and they still looked at us as a bunch of yahoos who played with their guns and equipment every other weekend — and left crumbs on their desks.
Boy have times changed.
This time around more reservists were initially called to war than active duty. There was no whining, no grousing. We reservists took the motto “Be Ready” seriously. We got ready. Congress gave us money for training, equipment, and the time to gain experience with real-time exercises that closely mimicked the real deal.
It was quite a change from waving passengers through at Fleet Week in New York, though that was fun!
And the active duty watched and begrudgingly had to acknowledge that not only were we pretty sharp on the draw, we looked pretty good in uniform, too.
We kept pace with them, ever so aware of a judgmental eye or two, and earned their appreciation of the skills we brought from our civilian lives.
More joint exercises led to more real-time joint war-fighting.
A couple years ago when I was serving on the Talisman Saber exercise in Rockhampton, Australia, a whole bunch of us were working in the same tent camp, surrounded by environmentalists protesting. Toward the end of this, the largest biennial joint exercise in the Pacific, we traded stories with the Aussies and with our own about how our missions were going, what challenges we had, and how many protesters we’d dealt with that day.
Only toward the end of the exercise — if at all — was the question asked: Are you a reservist? And when we told them we were, they exclained, “Hey mate! Your’re kidding, right — never would’ve guessed!”
In other words, status was last thing on their minds. We’d finally become one big fighting team, not only as U.S. troops — reservists and active duty alike — but allies working in tandem.
As the wars continue in Iraq and Afghanistan, we hope in this respect the U.S. military and its allies will be recognized simply as one mean fighting team. And darn proud.
To the fellow reservists out there, tell me how it’s going for you — are you having the same kinds of experiences with the active duty? Are you feeling “ready and fully integrated,” as the Navy likes to say? Tell us your experiences, for better or worse.
