PTSD, the Military and Secondary Trauma: An Expert Opinion
From our comments, regarding the Fort Hood shooting: "People who make psych diagnoses based on news articles and tv segments are indeed idiots. People who make racist statements are indeed racists. That understood, let's not deny the reality of secondary trauma and PTSD-related violence. Secondary trauma is a genuine phenomenon that occurs with counselors and psychologists who work with other people who have experienced primary trauma…. Counselors on the GI Rights Hotline-877-447-4487—assist people in the military to obtain their rights, including the right to obtain discharge and to have accurate information about the consequences of going AWOL and UA. These counselors often experience secondary trauma related to this work…. It is literally criminal that there is inadequate care for people in the military who have PTSD, that people in the military with PTSD may be harassed and otherwise discouraged from obtaining treatment,and that this condition is often misdiagnosed-sometimes intentionally to avoid giving pensions to people with PTSD."
re: the above. Very interesting ongoing story with a minnesota marine and the corps' refusal to acknowledge PTSD
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/10/08/hafterson-marines/
It's so unfair that people who sign up to kill other people for money don't have the resulting psychological trauma dealt with adequately.
My brother has PTSD since serving in Somalia. He went into the military with the intention of becoming a nurse thru GI bill-ya know young kid, no money, needs education. Anyway-ends up nurse there in e-vac unit (during black hawk down nightmare.) While there he would travel to airport to collect supplies. Somali gangs would try to ambush vehicles and he would HAVE to defend himself. These supplies were to mend not only US casualty, but any Somali casualty that were brought into unit. He couldn't carry a weapon in there and was treating people who had no uniform and he didn't trust. Those who suffer PTSD can't be bunched into one big pile of killers who deserve what they get. Each one has a story to be told. Bye the way, my brother was also very angry that he was there, while the prez. was dining Somali Warlords. War is a complicated thing.
Thank you. My dad spent two years on the front lines in Vietnam because he was a poor kid from Oakland working a blue collar job and lacked the money or sophistication to dodge the draft. He didn't sign up to kill people for money.
Obviously if they can't deal with, they're just not 'real men.'
This is why we can't have gays in the military people!!!
I would actually not be surprised to hear the likes of Sean Hannity spew something similar. Sigh.
They're worried about random PTSD-induced ass-fucking rampages.
Hot.
I would also urge people not to underestimage the lengths people will go to, to avoid having to serve overseas. Let's say my brother, after his first tour in Iraq, really set out to sabotage himself so that he wouldn't have to get sent back over…
Your brother? I'm more concerned about your husband, that incorrigible Arab hooligan Aladdin.
They're reporting he shouted 'Allah Akbar' right before he shot – this is going to get bad, methinks.
This is almost like a fucking South Park episode, except with victims, repercussions, etc.
Sigh.
It's weird; there are other folks who were there who say he said nothing. I'm sort of hoping that the "god is great" stuff is (sick) wishful thinking, along the lines of those stories of girls professing their devotion to Christ before getting shot by Dylan and Eric.
So we're going with the "expert" PTSD explanation for this are we? Let's see, how many soldiers have PTSD? How many of them go on a murderous rampage? You can get the figures from anywhere you want, but there's no way that PTSD could be seen as causal in this case even if it's true that the perp has it.
There's something special about mass murderers that can't be explained by factors that apply to the millions of PTSD patients, Texans, VT students, or Muslims.