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xchrom

(108,903 posts)
Fri Jun 20, 2014, 07:26 AM Jun 2014

Want to Prevent PTSD? End Unbridled US Militarism

https://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/06/20-1



Because my 33​-​year-old father was on the verge of embarking for Europe and the allied invasion of Italy, my birth certificate reads: U.S. Army Hospital, Fort Benning, Georgia. When he finally returned, PFC Lee Olson's decorations included a Purple Heart Medal for ​​shrapnel wounds suffered from a German hand grenade in the Battle of Monte Cassino, one of the longest, bloodiest and most costly land campaigns of World War II.

​After my dad died from a sudden heart attack in 1956, I recall my mother wistfully confiding to me that your “Your father was never the same person after the war.”​ A stoical Scandinavian, this was her cryptic explanation for my dad's emotional disengagement, frightening impatience, brooding sadness and inability to hold a steady job.​ ​Like so many other spouses of returning vets, she mourned for the prewar husband who remained missing in action.​

​​Perhaps she hoped that one day I'd understand why he could never be the loving father he might have been and after decades of trying to fathom and​ forgive my dad, I finally grasped how the personal had become poignantly political for one unsuspecting 12-year-old boy. In that sense, my mom and I were​ ​undocumented collateral damage.​

​World War II combat veterans rarely if ever gave voice​ ​to what they’d done or witnessed and my father was no exception. My best guess is that his emotional scars would be diagnosed today as chronic or delayed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which the American Psychiatric Association defines this way:

The person has experienced, witnessed or been confronted with an event or events that involve actual or threatened deaths or serious injury or a threat to the physical integrity of oneself or others, and his/her response involved fear, helplessness, or horror.​
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Want to Prevent PTSD? End Unbridled US Militarism (Original Post) xchrom Jun 2014 OP
Great article.Sad but true. SummerSnow Jun 2014 #1

SummerSnow

(12,608 posts)
1. Great article.Sad but true.
Fri Jun 20, 2014, 07:33 AM
Jun 2014

Unbridled militarism does affects so many families and the results are long-term.

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