Jake Richmond
3/9/09
McDonald MW
Concerns Essay
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a.k.a. PTSD, depression, combat trauma, or whatever else you may want to call it, is a very serious mental condition that soldiers develop from being in traumatic events, most commonly known as war or combat. There are many other types of PTSD and ways to fall susceptible to it but the one of concern today is combat related PTSD and the effects it has on our soldiers while trying to reacquaint themselves with a “normal” civilian life after being in a war torn environment for months or years at a time.
Imagine this, you’re in a foreign country where there is thousands upon thousand of people trying to kill you or end your life anyway they can 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You’ve blown people up, shot them in the head and saw their brains spill out onto the dusty street, picked up pieces of what was your friend leftover from a roadside bomb, RPG (Rocket Propelled Grenade), or suicide bomber. Imagine you yourself getting shot at or having a limb blown off. You look down and all you see is some blood, muscle tissue, bone fragments, and god knows what else. How would you react? Could you just brush it off? Soldiers fight for our freedom, our rights, yet “1 in 8 soldiers come home with PTSD“ (Mental Health MSNBC.com). They can’t sleep at night, they are jumpy in big crowds, they don’t want to be around unfamiliar people, and many of them just commit suicide to end it all. “There was at least 128 suicides in 2008, an increase from a total of 115 in 2007.”(Voanews.com). This is very, very sad. These soldiers that are fighting for our rights and freedoms, putting their lives on the line for us and then killing themselves because they didn’t receive the proper medical treatment when they returned home. How is that fair? Or them having to lie about having PTSD so that they can get a job as soon as they get home or be around their families. Many soldiers do not even admit to having...