PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder)
This week on Legendary Warriors, I want to touch on a topic that is personally very important to me. This topic is PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), and in my opinion, it’s very important to raise awareness, and understand this mental illness. PTSD is sometimes known as shell shock or combat stress. PTSD can result from incidents that cause severe trauma or a life threatening event. Your mind and body are in shock after a certain event has happened, its like your nervous system has ultimately become stuck.
Here is a section out of a PTSD article on veterans PTSD Article :
Symptoms sometimes don’t surface for months or even years after returning from deployment. While PTSD develops differently from veteran to veteran, there are four symptom clusters:
- Recurrent, intrusive reminders of the traumatic event, including distressing thoughts, nightmares, and flashbacks where you feel like it’s happening again. Experiencing extreme emotional and physical reactions to reminders (panic attacks, uncontrollable shaking, heart palpitations, etc.).
- Extreme avoidance of things that remind you of the traumatic event, including people, places, people, thoughts, or situations you associate with the bad memories. Withdrawing from friends and family and losing interest in everyday activities.
- Negative changes in thoughts and mood, such as exaggerated negative beliefs about yourself or the world and persistent feelings of fear, guilt, or shame. Diminished ability to experience positive emotions.
- Being on guard all the time, jumpy, and emotionally reactive, as indicated by irritability, anger, reckless behavior, difficulty sleeping, trouble concentrating, and hyper-vigilance.
As mentioned above, PTSD affects veterans in different ways. To put certain thoughts into perspective, I will show you part of an interview with C.J. Grisham, a 1SG (First Sergeant) in the Army,Warning: “Once, he said he was forced to shoot a person being used as a human shield. Another time, he helped an Iraqi family extract a dead loved one from a burned car. He started to have flashbacks, vivid nightmares and suicidal thoughts — all signs of post-traumatic stress disorder.” Grisham had voices in his head whispering to him that he shouldn’t be alive, or that he isn’t good enough to be alive. The voices also tell him that his depression from these events are a weakness, and that his because of his own selfishness, his friends were killed. Grisham said that the voices are maddening, and he looks forward to the day that the voices stop. Please read this article to hear more on this story: The Effects are Different
We Need to Help
It’s our job as citizens of America to recognize and realize all that these veterans have done for us. PTSD goes unrecognized, and these veterans are forced to cope with this mental illness in a society that doesn’t appreciate or understand the context of PTSD to a full extent. Please spread the word and help them out. You can learn more about PTSD and spread the word by clicking on this link. PTSD Foundation of America
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