PTSD doesn't just affect soldiers, it can affect ordinary people that have had trauma in childhood, front line responders, accident victims, crime victims. Shell shock, battle fatigue, has been around since the beginning of time. Having said that, a big difference I see, since the end of WWII is how poorly our veterans are treated.
Without getting into to much detail, I spend one evening a week, 5-11pm (and occasional days on the weekend) at a local Residential Rehabilitation Center for Addiction, and many of the people I try to help are veterans that have come back from deployments. Last summer was a particularly big (bad) year, as many Canadian soldiers of all ranks came back from Kandahar, Afghanistan.
They are all suffering from substance abuse problems, as well as PTSD. I've been through some training in PTSD, and these poor vets become addicts because they can't, "stop the tape(video) in their head". Smells, sounds, sights, trigger them, and the only way they can find peace, is to obliterate the feeling, "pause the tape" if you will, through self-medication. These soldiers, medics, etc., have been kept in a state of fight or flight for the entire deployment.
In Kandahar, "inside the wire", is where all the senses go partially off, they still get shelled/sniper fire however. "Outside the wire", they are on constant alert, in a perpetual state of fight or flight, and being soldiers, they have to suppress the natural instinct to flee, they can't run away, they're trained to fight. So they are stuck in this imposed unnatural state. Other natural instincts they have to suppress as well, normal human instincts of protecting your fellow man, women, children. The feelings of guilt and shame they come home with when they can't intervene while witnessing a horrendous act of violence on another innocent man, women or child is particularly traumatizing.
We were told of how the military would train them about IEDs. Many would be hidden in these bright yellow gas/oil cans. Well, it turns out the people use these can's for everything, they are everywhere, on the back of bikes, on every street corner....you get the picture, everything is a constant threat - there is no way to tell who is friend and who is enemy.
The Dr's say, what they know of it, that it just takes the right scenario and the right person to result in PTSD. Where the tape in their head won't stop, and they can't stop it, it won't stop, they are stuck in a heightened state of "fight" and it won't turn off, so they become addicts to try to find some peace.
It's terrible, a complete and utter tragedy that these veterans are thrown away, left in a horrible mental state, addicted, forgotten, and just told to, "get over it".
At the center, when we try to help them with their addiction, while concurrently helping them with their PTSD, we know that for every one that's sitting there, there are hundreds more, if not thousands, that are alone, forgotten, and have lost their careers, their friends, their families, and worst of all their hope.
Maybe that's a sign of the age we live in now, when we allow these people, our brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers, to be treated like disposable, broken, damaged goods.
