Furious Seasons

October 20, 2005

Many Soldiers Coming Home and Feeling Suicidal

This will not surprise anyone, but a large number of US soldiers and marines who've been screened for health problems upon their return to the states are turning up with clear indications of mental illness. Out of 50,000 examined, 1,700 reported wanting to hurt themselves or said they wished they were dead. 3,700 of them reported fears that they would hurt someone else. War is hell, of course. But there is something particularly disrupting about how we train soldiers these days (cf. Grossman's "On Killing"), desensitizing them to the value of human life (ie, the news today of special forces troops burning Afghans and taunting villagers with the dead bodies), and the conditions they encounter in the field. If there's a plus here, it's that DoD now takes this business seriously and actually checks up on our troops. I strongly believe that when the military and police forces understand that mental illness is a huge, unacknowledged problem in their ranks and actually do something about it, then much of the stigma around mental illness in America will disappear.

Posted by Philip Dawdy at October 20, 2005 09:11 AM

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Soldiers coming back from war, exprience mild to extreme post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

I've never been in war but I feel I've gotten a little taste of what it's like to be profoundly haunted by the past:

When I was in the hospital, I was in a different world -- a world in which right and wrong were completely reversed, a world in which real was not really real, a world in which there was no limit to what I could and would do.

And that's how I lived for sixth horrible months: doing things which, in this world, would be enough to almost deserve the death penalty.

Eventually I got on meds again, and I was back in this world.

But I wasn't always back.

In my dreams during the night, in my thoughts during the day, I would be transported right back to where I had been -- where I was capable of doing ANYTHING.

One time, during one of these episodes, my doctor called the police. Another time, my mom had to pick me up from work. Yet another time, I sat down right in the middle of the road.

For it was during these times I was still in that other, Gwen world, and I just couldn't get out of it.

I believe that that's what is happening to the soldiers -- they can't escape the trauma of what they saw and heard and felt. They are continually transported back to the war where there is horror beyond anyone's belief.

And that's what's causing them to want to harm themselves or others -- they JUST CAN'T STAND IT. They can't STAND it. They can't STAND it. They can't STAND it.

For me personally, my schizophrenia I've been able stand.

It's the PTSD from the schizophrenia that I cannot.

Living in the past is living in hell.

Posted by: Gwen Davis at October 20, 2005 05:58 PM