December 18, 2004

• I read an interesting article in the New Yorker awhile back about PTS in soldiers returning from war. According to the article, in WWII only 30% of green soldiers fired their rifles in their first battle. The US Army noted how the Panzer platoons didn't have this problem and researched their training procedures. Which is, basically, to desensitize soldiers so they fire without thinking. In Vietnam the stats rose to over 80% shooting on their first sortie. Desert Storm was in the high 90 percentile. Unfortunately, in making soldiers killing machines they only have one shrink per 5,000 soldiers, leaving each individual to mostly deal with the sights and memories of war on his own. Scary shit.
• One time my then-boyfriend punched me in the nose while asleep - then my terrified scream woke him up and he started screaming too and hugging me. Evidently he'd had some weird dream where he was defending my honor or some shit (he needn't have bothered, my honor is beyond defending at this point) and punched a guy. He was apologizing for WEEKS, even though I realized he'd been asleep. Once he stopped apologizing it became a pretty funny moment in the relationship. But right, back to PTSD. My dad had it, but not from a war. And it sucked. And that's all I've got to say about that.
• Debaser: That's Malcolm Gladwell's "Getting Over It." Very thought-provoking, like all his articles. (I highly recommend, for example, "Black Like Them.")
• Oh, the soldiers, they have post-traumatic stress? Well I never. OF COURSE THEY FUCKING DO. I hate this planet. The human race is truly fucked.
• Actually, languagehat, that's not the exact article I'm talking about. Though it is a very good read. I'll definitely keep an eye out for Mr. Gladwell's articles in the future.
• i find it curious that ptsd studies seem to focus on military personnel. these are people who, after all, made a conscious choice to (potentially) put themselves into positions where death is the objective. i don't recall ever reading about how civilians survive living in areas where bombs are being dropped and bullets are flying. i don't mean to dismiss the effects of war on anyone, but it occurs to me that the people who should REALLY be stressing are the people living in war zones. a quick google turned up this, which in part studies children who survived war, but most of the search results zeroed in on soliders, parents & spouses of soliders, and non-military types (i.e., doctors & nurses) serving in war zones.
• wow, musing, hope your dad got some help and is doing better. PTSD sounds terrifying.
• PTSD can occur to anyone subjected to a single horrific event, or to a period of time where an individual feels absolutely controlled by another person or situation. This is why childhood abuse causes a form of PTSD called Chronic PTSD. I think more attention was/is paid to combat triggered PTSD because you had a large group who had experienced similar situations exhibiting similar symtoms in a short amount of time, as compared to the less-defined nature of the victims and situations experienced by those who were not combatants.
• "symptoms" This suggests that the majority of cases of PTSD in the US are caused by something that is, unfortunately, quite common.
• You mean volunteering to be an active participant in the largest terrorist organization in the world (the U.S. military) and then being sent off to kill, rape and torture people in an illegal and immoral invasion of a sovereign nation causes one to break down and stop functioning like a human being? I'm far more concerned with the Iraqi citizens who have to suffer these injustices. They, at least, might have some claim to innocence, unlike the hired thug brigades.
• The US? A terrorist organization? STFU coppermac. I'm not a right winger by any means but that's just some dumb shit to kick. You're more worried about Iraqi citizens than the US's troops. Fuck you, you stupid piece of shit...
• /curmudgeon
• Umm... that was a bit harsh, coppermac... I apologize for the earlier post. Still, it's a touchy subject for me... 'nuff said.
• Oh crap... I just saw your bullshit argument on another thread. My Fuck You is sooooo back on biatch!!!!!!
• You need higher quality drugs, dimwit.
• Tell it to the Bosnians, coppermac.
• moneyjane: My father was the passenger in the vehicle. His boss and good friend was driving. They crested a hill, and the downhill road surface was unmaintained and incredibly slippery after a light drizzle (the road was so slippery that the emergency vehicles nearly crashed themselves). They hydroplaned and went flying into a tree. My dad blacked out and when he came to he saw his boss next to him, a branch through the boss's heart and with the boss's right arm cut entirely off. My dad ripped his shirt off to make a tourniquet for the arm and then he realized: it wasn't bleeding. The branch had stopped his heart instantly. He wasn't quite right after that for a very long time.

• Debaser626: You're more worried about Iraqi citizens than the US's troops. Fuck you

  Unless you are an American or tuned into the Bush administration's propaganda, your sympathies will tend to lie with the Iraqi civillians rather than the occupying forces. Surely you don't deny that the Iraqi civillians have suffered the most in this war! Their suffering is truly horrific, as unlike that of the Coalition forces as a few nights of fitful sleep is from having one's family dead, friends killed, and life ruined. If Al-Qaeda are terrorists for causing the death of nearly 3000 American civillians, it stands to reason that the Coalition are terrorists nearly five times worse. Many Americans sat rooted in awe when the Bush administration 'called evil by its name'. Well, I say it is long overdue for the world to rectify a glaring omission from the 'Axis Of Evil'.
• Are the Kurds and Shi'ites not Iraqi, too?
• Yes, the inhabitants of any country are generally described using adjectives derived from the name of that country. You can use this trick, for instance, to infer that the black population of the Darfur region of Sudan are Sudanese. Anything else confusing you?
• Nothing else, thank you. Certainly, that puts your shrill rhetoric in its proper perspective. I appreciate your clarification.
• musingmelpomene That would sure the hell do it. Your poor dad :( I think PTSD has something to do with the Matrix effect - in a split second you've seen IT; nothing hangs together as it once did, everything is suspect, and you cannot understand the 'normal' people around you any longer. It's so disturbing to your sense of self that your body and mind continues to try to make what happened make sense by replaying it over and over. Which doesn't work, because certain things just cannot be made understandable, and you never can be who you were before you saw IT. You can, however, try and deal with the effects, once you know that it's PTSD, and what's happening to you is a natural process.
• What fuyugare said. I hate agreeing with fuyugare.

• You're more worried about Iraqi citizens than the US's troops.

  Damn straight. If more troops who run around invading other peoples' countries on the strength of a pack of lies, set up tourture camps, and murder the wounded end up dead, good. Perhaps it'll discourage the next lot.
• There are some great books about PTSD (by great I mean in the educational sense, obviously) - especially Achilles in Vietnam by Jonathan Shay and Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman. The former talks about Vietnam soldiers (and compares them to the soldiers at Troy as described in The Iliad (weird, but interesting) and the latter about PTSD resulting from domestic abuse to prisoners of war. I'd recommend them both to anyone who wants to know more about this sort of thing. I did a third-year course on the psychology of trauma a couple of years ago (my only psych class and my favourite class I ever took). It blew me away. A lot of PTSD results from the dissocation that comes with a traumatic experience. Our brain tries to separate us from the event, and the long-term result is constant reliving of whatever happened. That's a very basic summary and there's so much more to it. Other results of trauma, somewhat predictably, include Dissociative Identity Disorder and - what is it called these days? - Multiple Personality Disorder. For what it's worth, I see nothing wrong with sympathising with both the American soldiers who are suffering from PTSD now (much like Vietnam's veterans, or even the shell-shocked soldiers from WW1 and WW2), and with the civilians who are witness to the events. Just because someone has volunteered for the army doesn't mean they deserve to suffer mentally for the rest of their lives, not to mention the suffering their families will go through too. I only hope that the civilians get the support and help they need to deal with the trauma as best they can, although I doubt that will happen. And that's probably the thing that would tip the scales for me. On preview: I doubt that would change much, rodgerd. Vietnam may have given people reason to be more vigilant, but it doesn't seem to have slowed recruitment rates at all.
• I'll second Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman. Also, if we can be pissed at Bush rather than Americans in general, I think we can despise the soldiers like the guards at Abu Ghraib without hating every American soldier in Iraq. And you can't have it both ways - the American masses often summarily dismissed as redneck knuckle-draggers are the same people signing on as soldiers - and often doing so trying to get an education. Which, one would presume, given the complicated rhetoric that flies about this joint at times, is what separates 'them' from 'us'. So what's up with blaming under-educated and perhaps politically unsophisticated people for not making the same decisions we, as educated and intently politically aware, would make? I think a fuck of a lot of them are getting a shitload of education about how the world really works and political awareness out the ying-yang while getting their asses blown up - and now they can't get out. I'm not about to conveniently demonize these people for not being like me, and for making a mistake that will likely leave them maimed, psychologically damaged or their mama with a folded American flag.
• This might be an interesting question. Did anyone actually read the links I posted?
• I don't know dude - discussing American soldiers and psychological damage seemed kinda relevant to Soldiers Back From Iraq With Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder to me.
• I thought we were doing Crossfire. Who wants to wear Carlson Tucker's bow tie?

• On preview: I doubt that would change much, rodgerd. Vietnam may have given people reason to be more vigilant, but it doesn't seem to have slowed recruitment rates at all.

  I suppose not. After all, I know someone who's off to join the French Foreign Legion because he's bored with life. What a wonderful solution - kill people for money and a French passport, because of the tedium.
• Sullivan What did you expect? People to discuss the effects of the Iraq War on American soldiers without discussing the war or the soldiers?
• Somewhat related, via MeFi: Last survivor of 'Christmas truce' tells of his sorrow.
• PSTD was named because of what was considered a new phenomena occurring from war. it's relatively recent that it has come to encompass other trauma and that was a new leap, in discovering it in abused children and battered women. from there it's been found that people react to an ever widening possibilities things as traumatic, but it was initially seen as something occurring from the wholly distinct and extreme circumstances of wartime as it was a large segment of the population who had not noted any "mental health" problems previously. that trauma is a part of people's lives isn't new, it's that it is far more acceptible, accessible and widespread as part of open contemporary culture. in general from what what i've found, mental health services and issues aren't often addressed in the military and the military is subject to lots of problems because of it, from spousal abuse to domestic problems in the separation of worklife and family. There seems a long history in the "don't ask, don't tell" in many aspects of the military at every level, esp. since how something looks on one's record is the arbitor of how far one can go.
• it's that it is far more acceptible, accessible and widespread as part of open contemporary culture. i meant in being discussed personally, i find the widespread misuse of psychological terms to be not only escalating but worsening
• Soldiers Back From Iraq With Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Well, I hope this didnt come as a surprise to anyone.

• in general from what what i've found, mental health services and issues aren't often addressed in the military and the military is subject to lots of problems because of it,

  Quite the opposite. Have a look at the studies/history around soldiers firing their weapons. Since WW II studies started indicating soldiers (ie people) aren't predisposed to kill, the millitary has been attempting to break down the inhibitions most people apparently feel about shooting one another. "The millitary" is in fact intensely interested in mental health problems - it's interested in creating them, by making people more aggressive and violent, so they'll be more likely to kill on command.