posted
We were having a disturbing conversation last night about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, suicide in the armed services, and domestic violence among returning veterans.
I wondered if there was much coverage of the issue and basically found some stuff that is on the websites of advocacy groups, but hasn't really appeared in the mainstream media (that I could find easily with Google anyway).
The problem I'm wondering about is whether statements like:
"We're seeing proportions like those following Vietnam, with 33% of returning soldiers showing at least some signs of PTSD (as found in a 1988 survey of Vietnam vets and a recent study [no link] of returning Gulf war troops. We're also seeing that fewer than 25% of the troops with PTSD ever seek help..."
(the above is paraphrased/summarized).
There are some sources referencing problems with alcohol and drugs, and that spouse and child abuse are problems among returning US servicemen.
Not a lot of data out there. That in itself concerns me.
But there's a larger question I'd like to address:
Given what we seem to know about the cycle of abuse, is there a cost to this (and any) war that we as a society should be factoring into our thinking on how we go about these affairs?
Are these issues serious enough, and real enough, that we might, as a society, want to pursue alternatives to warfare more "aggressively?" and, more directly to the point, develop post-service programs for veterans so that they aren't just dumped back into society without sufficient mental health resources to access?
It seems to me that we ask our soldiers to fight and kill (and see death all around them) and expect them, in the main, to tough it out. There are services nowadays. And it's actually not as much of a stigma to say one has PTSD as it used to be (I remember the initial reaction to this label was that the people claiming it had made the whole thing up -- I doubt that's really the general attitude about it anymore). The attitude within the services might, I suspect, be a little biased against treatment. If one wants to stay in the military, admitting a mental problem related to war experience is probably not a career-building move.
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posted
I think alternatives to war should be seriously considered. These are young men who should get to lead so-called normal lives. There's nothing really normal about war or being broken down and trained to be a killer. They should be allowed to have counselling after the war is over, a sort of, rehabilitation to the "real world." Unfortunetly, it seems like things like this are not a high priority to some, especially the current administration.
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posted
"And it's actually not as much of a stigma to say one has PTSD as it used to be"
Golly. My neurologist suggested that I see a psychologist for PTSD, just for having an illness. I can't even begin to fathom the effects of any war on any person. I think there should be some sort of post-service screening process for soldiers. I know one woman whose husband ws very depressed after coming home. I also worked with a Vietnam vet who was a medic, who sort of snapped in his late 40's.
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I don't think it's ever been a priority. I wonder how much of the national problem with domestic violence can be traced to cycles starting as long ago as the Civil War...
Maybe we're actually repeating a cycle of violence carried forward from our own past aggression in military contexts...
I don't know enough about it, really, but I've never seen much in the way of real coverage of this issue, assuming it's a real problem, of course.
I think it is -- 33% of soldiers with some signs of PTSD seems high enough to be of concern.
But we should always be careful with blanket statements about mental illness. The real issue is whether or not someone has become dysfunctional, seems to me. It'd seem abnormal NOT to be at least somewhat depressed after being in a high-stress environment like a war zone. But does the person have the ability to cope and readjust to civilian life afterwards? If the stress is too great, or the life experience too shallow (i.e., not enough good coping mechanisms in place), that' when the serious problems can be expected.
How many of the soldiers does this description apply to?
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posted
Liz, you raise a good point. Latency can be quite long for these things. A person can seem fine for years but what's really going on is repression. If all the memories come flooding back 20 years later, is that person going to get timely effective help, even if the services set up post-war mental health screening?
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posted
If you're going to postulate that your domestic violence problems come from the wars you've fought, you're going to have to explain why Europe doesn't have them to the same degree, when we were much more deeply involved in both the Great War and WWII.
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posted
Obviously we do not. Europe is a refined place full of superior humans, and we would never dream of (ugh!) striking a fellow human being with the naked fist. So barbarous! It is a measure of the uncouthness of you colonials that you can even contemplate the prospect with equianimity. In fact, I feel quite faint; I believe I shall go and lie down.
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posted
King of Men is having a fit of the vapours!
*interested
I bet WHO might have some stats.
[Edit: Here are some WHO links to gender-based violence, particularly Domestic Violence Against Women (DVAW), if anyone is so inclined to dig. I have other fish to fry today, unfortunately. Works calls with the rabid snarl of a starving lion. "Do me! Do me!" instead of "Feed me! Feed me!" though. ]
If I'm reading these right, in the U.S. 22% of women have ever been assaulted by their partner. There are only a few European countries with results, ranging from 14% for Moldova, 18-21% for Norway, Switzerland, and Netherlands, to 30% for U.K.
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posted
Use a spot of caution comparing those figures, though. The US figure notes that "Sample group included women who had never been in a relationship and therefore were not at risk of partner violence." That's not true for the Norway figure. Also the age ranges differ.
Edit : Also, I just noticed the figures are for Trondhjem. Well, everybody knows that those rednecks beat their wives every day! Rough, violent characters, they are. Too bad Sweden lost that war, we wouldn't really have missed the parts they tried to annex.
[ February 12, 2005, 02:23 PM: Message edited by: King of Men ]
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posted
I know. But so did UK and one of the Netherland numbers. This isn't definitive, but I'm not seeing a broad trend that the problem worse or better in Europe or America.
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Should we be worried about the needs of our soldiers? -- yes.
Should we fear that they are ticking time bombs of violence? -- no.
There's a guy named McConnell (a Vietnam vet himself, so not an unbiased source) who did a study on it and found that Vietnam combat veterans were actually more likely to be employed, less likely to have criminal histories, and less likely to have diagnosed neuroses than their civilian counterparts.
Of course, you could attribute the last to a reluctance to seek counseling and the lack of criminal activity to their increased discipline, so it's hardly conclusive...
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Interesting that you should bring this up. A few days ago they had a spot on NPR (listen to it here) about what the Department of Defense is currently doing to deal with this. I think you'll be pleased with what you hear.
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