Last week, on Veterans’ Day, Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki spoke to a group of young veterans and asked if any of them suffered from PTSD.

No one raised their hand.

The retired general then asked:  “How many of you have a little trouble sleeping at night?”

Several hands went up.

“How many of you are overly vigilant about protecting your home?”

More hands went up.

“How many of you are having nightmares or find yourself having difficulty managing your anger?”

After several questions, almost every veteran in the room had raised their hands.

Why, then, did no one raise their hand when the Secretary first asked if anyone suffered PTSD?  With all the information now available about PTSD, do soldiers and veterans still not have critical information?  Or is it that PTSD still carries a stigma, a holdover of the belief throughout the 20^th century that post traumatic stress disorder is a sign of weakness?

Shinseki went to great pains to describe the fall out of multiple deployments, how a soldier loses “resiliency” from repeatedly placing themselves in harm’s way.  He is working to ensure that the VA better tracks a veteran’s health after their deployment and/or service ends.

While that is good to hear, it doesn’t make clear what information soldiers receive about the dangers combat presents to their mental health.  Nor does it address the perception that PTSD carries a stigma.

But beyond these substantial obstacles to a veteran’s recognizing and addressing how symptoms of PTSD there is an even more formidable one:  a profound resistance to admitting that one’s spirit, one’s essential self, has been disfigured.

Because what part of us does the trauma of war wound?  PTSD has been categorized as an anxiety disorder, a mental health issue, the province of mental health experts. And just as the primary treatment for mental health illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder is pharmaceuticals that help balance the brain’s chemistry, so is the mainstream approach to PTSD to prescribe drugs- very serious drugs.  But there is little evidence of that approach healing PTSD.

One of the pioneers in healing veterans suffering from PTSD is Dr. Edward Tick who sees PTSD as indicating a deep wound to the soul that resulted from moral trauma. Most mental health professionals define trauma as any event that creates a sense of imminent death.  While that is certainly a common experience in war, a more fundamental aspect of becoming a soldier is becoming trained to kill and assimilating the belief that war permits killing the enemy.  What had been evil is now permissible. In the case of soldiers who become witnesses to atrocity, the meaning of evil itself becomes more than the mind can bear.  This new moral framework takes a terrible toll on the soldier, a toll that often does not become evident for months, even years after service has ended.

The soldier returns, not the “same boy” who left home.  How excruciating and terrifying to look into a mirror and see a stranger-  a disfigured stranger, a person robbed of their core beliefs and self-image, a loss that cuts off from their community.

If we are to take care of our veterans and end the cycle of trauma, we must speak the truth about PTSD.  It is a soul to the wound that drugs and traditional therapy cannot cure.  As Dr. Tick has discovered from years of working with Native Americans and ancient mythologies, healing comes from making “the difficult inner pilgrimage to discover the sources of the suffering, and work(ing) hard to give meaning to the wounding, and find(ing) ways to reconcile and forgive.”  (War and the Soul:  Healing Our Nation’s Veterans from PTSD, Quest Books, 2005)

Rather than continuing to treat veterans suffering PTSD with the mechanical support of drugs and isolated therapy, let us provide spiritual support.  Let us help them create meaning for their wounds and find forgiveness- for us as well as for themselves.

The Multigenerational Ripple of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)