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thedrifter
12-17-06, 09:38 AM
Many traumatized soldiers with PTSD feel ashamed to ask for help

Sunday, December 17, 2006
By ANDREA GURWITT
HERALD NEWS

Joseph Villabol didn't tell his Guard friends about his post-traumatic stress disorder and bipolar disorder for months. He felt too ashamed. Jovannie has not told her family, either. She thinks they wouldn't understand, that they'd look down on him.

You lose a limb, your skin is raked with shrapnel scars, these are injuries everyone sees, understandable outcomes of war. You lose your mind, you just look weak or like you're making it up.

Even as research and history make plain that the violence of battle can wound fighters' minds as well as their bodies, soldiers continue to fear the stigma of a mental health diagnosis.

Combat, including being shot at, handling dead bodies, killing the enemy or knowing someone killed, may very well cause a soldier to develop depression, anxiety or PTSD.

In a study completed two years ago, psychiatrists at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Maryland found that nearly 20 percent of Army soldiers and Marines who had served in Iraq met the criteria for PTSD.

Nearly 12 percent of the soldiers in the study deployed in Afghanistan met the PTSD criteria.

The overall percentage of soldiers with PTSD may very well be higher, experts say. It may simply be too early to know the magnitude of the problem because PTSD might take years to appear, and soldiers and veterans with PTSD might feel too ashamed to seek help.

"If you lined up seven people and did the same thing to all seven of them, you'd have seven different reactions," says Jaine Darwin, a clinical instructor of psychology at Harvard Medical School and co-director of SOFAR, Strategic Outreach to Families of All Reservists, a group working pro bono with families of Army Reservists and the National Guard.

Trauma is like a weapon. Everyone on the receiving end is injured, but some people heal and others don't. It may be that some soldiers have developed resilience skills before being in combat and others haven't. Or that some are able to manage the traumatic memories better than others. Experts just don't know.

-- Andrea Gurwitt


Psychological definitions

Post-traumatic stress disorder:

A psychiatric disorder caused by participation in traumatic events such as military combat, rape, natural disasters, terrorist incidents or serious accidents.

Many trauma survivors recover but some experience stress reactions long after the event is over. Symptoms include nightmares, flashbacks, anger, detachment, intrusive thoughts, depression, anxiety and insomnia.

It is estimated that after surviving a traumatic event, 8 percent of men and 20 percent of women develop PTSD. Approximately 30 percent of those will have PTSD for the rest of their lives.

-- National Center for PTSD, part of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs

Bipolar disorder:

A brain disorder also known as manic depressive illness. Symptoms include wild mood swings. The "high" phase of the mood swing includes a burst of energy, irritability, euphoria, spending sprees, little need to sleep, provocative or intrusive behavior and distractibility. The "low" phase includes feelings of guilt, worthlessness, restlessness, thoughts of death, and loss of interest or pleasure in once enjoyable activities.

There is no single cause of bipolar disorder, but it does tend to run in families.

-- National Institute of Mental Health

Ellie