March 02, 2006
Veterans Report Mental Distress
More than one in three soldiers and Marines who have served in Iraq later sought help for mental health problems, according to a comprehensive snapshot by Army experts of the psyches of men and women returning from the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places.
The war in Iraq has...set off a debate over how to define trauma itself, and whether it is appropriate to distinguish those who see combat firsthand from those who do not. The traditional definition of post-traumatic stress disorder, a diagnosis developed in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, involved directly experiencing or witnessing a horrifying event, but some experts are asking whether the constant fear of being killed in places such as Iraq might create problems both for people restricted to bases as well as for those who head outside.
"Being in the war zone does not constitute exposure to trauma," said McNally, who helped write the definition of PTSD for the American Psychiatric Association's diagnostic manual. "It is just stressful."
story By Shankar Vedantam The Washington Post | TruthOut
~America's veteran's hospitals are the closest this country gets to free medical care for the masses. That, continued high nation-wide unemployment and years of aggressive advertising campaigns by pharmaceutical companies (There's a pill for everything.) might account for this generation of soldiers' willingness to ask for help.
I'm guessing most are addressing issues exacerbated by the war, that they had before enlisting in the military. What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.
[photo not from above]