One young physician, Maj. Daniel O’Connor, of the Massachusetts Army National Guard, recently served at a triage station in Iraq for wounded soldiers and civilians. He believes that most families are resilient enough to weather the relationship stress of one deployment. But he pointed out that “by the end of the second or third deployment, and as many as three years away from home, many relationships start to suffer. When you factor in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that affects so many soldiers, even the strongest relationships will suffer.”
Rita Watson: Challenges for returning vets
01:00 AM EST on Sunday, February 3, 2008
RITA WATSON
IT IS VALENTINE’S DAY every day that a young man or woman arrives home safely from Iraq or Afghanistan. But for returning veterans the war often comes back with them. Family, friends and lovers looking forward to normality often see soldiers struggling with health and relationships as they fall through medical-care cracks. One member of an elite combat unit seeking help in Rhode Island was told: “Not only are you not in the system, but you are listed here as ‘sensitive file.’ I can’t even confirm that you were in the military.” This is an all too familiar story at Veterans Administration hospitals. Why?
“When you are a soldier you are under the purview of the Department of Defense whereas at home you are under the Veterans Administration. Because of confidentiality rules, the two do not share medical records,” says Anne Van Cott, a neurologist at the Veterans Administration Pittsburgh Health Care System.
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When I was searching for support for me to get through some of the worst times in our marriage, there wasn't any. 25 years ago, there wasn't much available to support the spouse of a veteran trying to hold it all together. I remember it all too well. While I am relieved times have changed and the net has been available around the world, I realize that very little has changed despite all the reports coming out on what PTSD is. Over and over I read how many in this country have no clue what PTSD is, what causes it or what goes along with it.
Well intended people will attack reporters doing stories on the veterans who commit crimes when they had absolutely no troubles before they left. They will attack reports on divorces and abuses instead of facing the fact that these men and women are wounded. They will label reports as being anti-military instead of seeing them as vital to preventing many of the problems these veterans have to face needlessly.
I see these families as my own and I see the veteran as my own husband. I know the suffering he is still going through and I know my own pain. I know what works and I know what needs to be done as well as what has not been done. While PTSD is complicated to understand at first, once everyone knows what it is, they have a tool to help them get though it. When they come home expecting to return to "normal" they find they cannot. How can anyone expect any of these humans exposed to the most horrific experiences known to man will return "normal" and unchanged? This is what I've been trying to get people to understand.
It has nothing to do with their bravery, patriotism, courage, ethics or character. It has nothing to do with how much they love their family or care about their friends. While I loved my husband deeply, it was not what saved his life. Knowledge was. Knowing what he was going through helped me to find the compassion and feed patience enough to stay by his side. It helped me to cope with the zone out coming as a flashback hits. I even learned to watch for the changes in his mood to know when one was coming. It helped me deal with the nightmares and the drain he would go through the next day. The mood swings on bad days when I wanted to ring his neck were not as hard to cope with when I knew where it was all coming from. All the love in the world cannot save a marriage if they don't have the tools to deal with all of this. Ignorance will destroy families and add to the difficulties these veterans have.
Imagine having cancer and dealing with it badly, then being abandoned by your family. Would you be ok with that? Would you be ok with finding out that no one was willing to "put up with you" when you were sick? Would you be ok telling someone to get a divorce because their spouse had a serious illness? Then why do we do it when the illness is PTSD? There are support groups all over the country for people who are overweight, families of alcoholics, cancer, bereavement, you name it but there are very few support groups for families of PTSD veterans and not enough for the veterans either. When people share common experiences, it is not only healing, it is empowering. We all need to give these families the power to cope and heal instead of judging them and insulting them as if they had anything to be ashamed of. They only shame in any of this is the fact we don't take this all seriously enough to have every single community across this country developing support services for the families so they can support the veteran we don't support either.
