Day 76: Deploying soldiers with PTSD

I helped out a friend today. She is having a hard time because she is separating from her husband. She is extremely private about their relationship and what is going on with them, but told me that her husband is experiencing bouts of aggression and hostility. He has been deployed twice I think. Even an armchair psychiatrist could take a stab that he has some sort of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or similar combat-related issue.

When she told me that he was deploying again within the month, after depicting his current treatment as significant, I was flabbergasted. He is getting shots of some sort to medicate him and seeing a therapist three times a week. His anger and violence are so bad that she is afraid to let him spend unsupervised time with his own children. But the army is sending him back?

This is a marriage that from an outside perspective was very close and happy just a few short years ago, maybe just a deployment ago. They have a 14 month old son who was very much wanted and planned. So we know they felt their marriage was pretty good as recently as two years ago when he was conceived. In that time frame, her husband has been deployed again. Maybe that was the straw that broke the camel's back. I don't really know their marriage, but I do know that this is someone who is a danger to his own very sweet children and wife and the army is sending him back to war next month.

This is just one story of many. People are coming home from this war broken. And being asked to act as if nothing had happened. While the Army claims they want to support the personnel and make sure help is available, not enough is being done to make the help truly available. The help is never truly private. You are stigmatized and shunned for even inquiring about mental health help. Your career in the military is basically over because you will be over looked for promotion due to the black mark on your record.

So what do people do? They drink and get DWIs. They hit their wives and children because they can't diffuse the anger inside them. They self-destruct with money, drugs, women. They pull the trigger of a gun pointed at their heads. And the army throws its hands up and says, "WHY?!?!?"

Seriously? Whose head is up their ass? You can't ask people to go through over and over and over what they do and not offer them real therapy and help with TRUE PRIVACY. In fact, the help should probably be somewhat mandatory. If you've done a tour with any action, you have to attend some sort of session once a week or month to talk about what you saw, felt, missed from home, etc. It can't hurt. Then the therapists can see people who might need extra help and target them without the stigma.

The government is talking a lot about cutting military pay. But the truth is our service members are sacrificing more than just time, safety, comfort. They are sacrificing their sanity. As I found in an article by Belleruth Naparstek much earlier this deployment that almost 100% of soldiers will experience PTSD symptoms after a single combat action or stressor situation (often witnessing bomb blasts or car crashes that are not active combat scenarios). They they experience it close to every day while deployed. More needs to be done to help soldiers deal with the absolutely normal reaction of horror and self-loathing and anger and fear that follows combat. While researching this blog, I came across an article from last fall. So much of what needs to be said, of what I wanted to say is in this article. Much of this article sounded like it was coming straight from my head.

US soldier refused Afghan deployment over PTSD

I understand that if soldiers can claim to have invisible symptoms of post traumatic stress to avoid deploying, some might, a few would. The Army had many soldiers use "being gay" to get released from service commitments. So they have to err on the side of being strict about allowing soldiers to use PTSD to avoid deployments. But when a soldier shows such significant and obvious symptoms, is being treated in what in my humble lay opinion is a quite serious manner, someone needs to raise a red flag and say, "No, this isn't OK!" Deploying a soldier who is obviously so wounded that he has destroyed the one thing that once mattered to him more than his own life, just doesn't make sense.

Is this soldier going to make sound split-second decisions in the field? Is he going to be a supportive team member for his other soldiers? Is his anger going to make the life of his roommate miserable and add exponential stress on another soldier trying to cope with an unstable, hostile, and depressed roommate? My husband had a roommate like that two deployments ago, and that was harder on him than the war. He had nowhere safe to withdraw or unwind. His room was a torture chamber full of hidden land mines and violence. I didn't know if he was going to be able to stand it for the year. He called me at the end of his rope many times because he couldn't handle it and wanted to be a good friend, but the psychotic episodes were dangerous, were seeping into their work and weren't healthy.

Post Traumatic Stress is a real issue. Why are we allowing the military to treat it any less than the very serious issue it is. The service members need access to true help without stigma and without the loss of face/honor within their ranks. And why are we allowing them to send sick men to war? where their stress makes them a risk to themselves and everyone around them? I wouldn't want him standing next to my husband! You?

Day 148: Libya

So as we're "finishing" the mission in Iraq, and there is talk of troop withdrawal in Afghanistan, another Middle Eastern conflict rears its ugly head. I didn't catch all of the President's speech, but I am concerned that despite his intentions to keep U.S. ground troops out of Libya, that the conflict is going to become unavoidable.

Just as I started to see the light at the end of the deployment tunnel, some other ugly situation pops up requiring our assistance. I do not begrudge any other nation or people the freedom's we have the luxury of taking for granted. All people deserve the chance to live freely and happily with basic human rights protecting them against tyranny and abuse.

But we can't be the world's police alone. Our soldiers are away from their families every other year or every six months depending on their MOS and deployment cycle. Earlier generations had wars. World War I, II, Korea, Vietnam, and I won't pretend to understand what the military and their families experienced. I am not the best war historian, but most soldiers' tours were limited and the number of tours was significantly less than current soldiers are experiencing.

We, soldiers, marines, sailors, airmen, and families, knew the military life. We all signed up for it in one way or another. That doesn't make the daily details any easier or the countless years apart. I CAN survive deployments, I can, but should I? Younger, weaker, newer, less independent, different couples are struggling HARD with the multiple deployments. My husband and I are struggling with the separation, the damage what he sees does to him, the damage being away over and over does to him. We are making it, we are surviving. But it isn't easy.

The newspapers, evening reports are full of soldiers committing suicide and our military wonders why? They have no hope to come home and stay there. Many soldiers deployed right now are already being told they will be home gearing up for the next trip, they never get to turn off the combat mindset. They feel if this is life, with the violence or maybe the destruction of a marriage or financial ruin or drinking or drugs or just constant war, why keep living.

Spouses go bed shopping, like we did last week, and the salesperson asks, "how does your spouse sleep?" and they don't know. They aren't together enough or haven't slept together in so long that they can't remember. My husband has spent this decade of military service away from his family for about half the time between trainings, schools, etc. 5 years gone.

All the time, people say, "You knew what you were getting into," but that is BS. Never in modern times has there been a military situation like this one, where we are constantly at war for a decade and seemingly adding new fronts. No other group of men or military have been asked to do this. They have fought harder more traumatic or deadly battles; they have been gone for years without a letter much less a visit; they have seen violence and fear like most of us can't imagine, but NONE have been asked to do this. GO and GO and be ON and ON and then come home and leave, asking spouses to step up, step back, be in control but not controlling.

None have been asked to keep marriages alive despite ripping them apart over and over. One source, Belleruth Naparstek from Health Journeys (author and psychotherapist) claims 95% of people in combat, experience some symptoms of PTSD, so soldiers who face repeated conflicts are repeatedly exposed to nearly guaranteed symptoms of PTSD which sometimes resolves itself and sometimes leaves lingering scars. Many soldiers suppress the pain and anguish normal for the experiences they've had because there isn't room for it in their Bradleys or Humvees. By the time they get home and come "down" enough to start to feel again and might have a chance to deal with their emotions, they are already preparing for the next deployment.

We can't invade Libya. We can't send the same guys away over and over and over and over and over and over. We can't ask people to do this unless we expect suicide, divorce, domestic violence, child abuse, drug abuse, alcoholism and rape to increase. People have limits. Some people may be more programmed to do this than others. My husband is one of those people, but he is not a machine. Maybe he isn't even as impervious as he would like me to believe.

I've seen the chink in his armor, not a weakness just his humanity, and if he has a chink in his, much of the rest of the army is in deep yogurt as my dad used to say. Our world is in danger, our country is in danger. We need more help than any human force can achieve. We can't fix the things that are broken in this world by stomping on them like a spark from a campfire and sending our people away from home and into combat repeatedly.

I don't know what the answer is. But I damn well know what it isn't. This HAS to stop. I hope NATO steps up. I hope someone finds a way to solve Libya without further military commitment from the U.S., but I ain't holding my breath. I do know that we can talk all day about working for military families and wives and safe guarding the mental health of our soldiers, but it is worthless crap until we do what needs to be done.

Let soldiers seek help without repercussions to their careers. If a career soldier needs help, he shouldn't lose his job, health benefits and retirement by admitting weakness. Which is what happens! The army spouts good messages, but once you admit you need help you are quietly pushed out, marked for less stressful duties, that designation takes you out of any career progression which mean you will be separated from the military before you finish your 20 depending on how many years in grade and in service you have at that time. Even failing to continue to progress takes future food out of the mouths of your family because your retirement is based on your pay and rank at the time of retirement.

We have to realize there is no way to protect people from WAR. It is messy, violent and takes its sacrifice whether we offer it up or not. There will always be an Egypt or Libya or Kuwait or Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan or . . . . . .


do we always have to be the ones leading the charge? going at all? sending the same troops over and over?

Every person around the world deserves human rights, but until every country around the world believes that and is willing to fight for that truth, something has got to give and it shouldn't be our military men and women anymore for a long time. We need a little piece of peace, please!