PTSD in Veterans-Past and Present
Joshua J. Cothern

Wartime is something that has always been a part of the United States World whether that is directly or indirectly. Although we often have our iron in every fire war is a constant in the backyard of other countries, like Syria and Afghanistan. Our government for so long has expected so much from our soldiers and just recently are realizing that our veterans have come back quite often with symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Have we as citizens of the United States done enough for these veterans from a medical, social, and physiological perspective? Many people don’t see the stressors of war, personally I write this from the other side of the wall. Having served in Afghanistan as an Intelligence Analyst I know first hand what so many veterans have been through and what others will continue to go through. I will do all I can to not let my perception convolute this piece or the great work done in Faces in the Face of Death. Being on the front lines or anywhere in a war zone for that fact are going to have stressors more than the average citizen will ever be able to understand. Whether that be missing your family, no hot water, cold food, or just ran out of your nicotine fix to keep you up on watch for the next 12 hours after already working 8, the stressors are there. Most folks experience these basic stressors regularly-now lets get to the “war” portion of these stressors involve death and amputation. These are the real causes of the common phrase in today’s society of PTSD. Living in an area where you honestly wake up not knowing if all of your brothers in arms will come home that night for dinner really feels like you are walking around with a million pounds on your shoulders constantly. This is at least how I felt from an Intelligence perspective, if I didn’t do my job 150% correct-soldiers could not make it back-this wasn’t an option for me. I often worked 18-20 hour days and in the end it was all worth it. Putting into words what it is like to get the news of casualties is something to this day I still have trouble doing. I don’t expect that to ever change. The work in Anaki and others did in this piece I thought was great-honestly the first time I have seen a study like this done. I think more people should be exposed to this to see that it is a real issue and one that we shouldn’t expect to be passing anytime soon. As more soldiers come back-expect it to be worse. One of the biggest issues is that the Veterans Affairs (VA) for hasn’t recognized PTSD long so if treatment were to be done it would be out of their pocket. Now the VA is starting to recognize this illness more often than not. This allows the veteran to get the help they need to beat this. One positive from this all is now that they are diagnosing PTSD; veterans from other wars will be able to seek treatment as well. This is huge from so many veterans’ that have been keeping this balled up for so long. Addressing the medical needs of veterans upon return is an issue that needs to be addressed to the most. Socially PTSD needs not be viewed with such a negative annotation as it has thus far. It is already hard enough to adjust from the soldiers’ perspective. Social normality is something all veterans strive for but is something that rarely comes back to the level before combat. If we as American’s can make this a little easier from the Veteran’s perspective we need to do so! The biggest hurdle to PTSD is battling it from a psychological perspective. In Faces in the Face of Death, Anaki was able to address the hypothesis of how to overcome the affects PTSD. They used a snowballing effect to evaluate the participants by breaking them up by age, years in service, combat experience, etc. The study was experimental but showed a great difference in that of combat veterans compared to those without combat exposure. Although not surprising to me the most important results I feel were that of anger, fear, and sadness were much more prominent in those that experience combat. The one that was a little less was that of happiness, this could be expected. I think overall, more studies need to be done. With this being an ongoing issue that we as Americans will be dealing with for many decades to come, we need to get to the forefront of this. The veteran’s deserve to be able to have peace of mind and social acceptance.