Trauma In Soldiers

1186 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Soldier experience essay

Intrusive memories, sleep disturbance, hyper arousal, and an emotional shutdown is what fifteen percent of soldiers who have seen combat deal with over the long term. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is an extremely disturbing and disabling illness and can be life threatening to some. It is not easy to cure and cannot happen overnight. Talking about there experience through therapy and forms of communication have turned out to be counter-productive. Emotions are exceptionally strong and can disallow their ability to think rationally. Many soldiers are not receiving the adequate support they need. This is not the kind of society that helps soldiers get over trauma quickly when they return home. Modern society takes its toll on people who …show more content…

According to Sebastian Junger, “this is not the kind of society you come home to can help you get over trauma quickly.” Everyday people suffer from depression and anxiety without experiencing the traumas of war. Imagine how soldiers feel. They come back to a place where civilians are not welcomed. An estimated 49,933 veterans out of the millions of civilians are homeless and have no way to deal with the mental wear of PTSD. People can make it better for veterans by being understanding and help them assimilate back to everyday life. While they are in the military they experience a sense of a tribe, the taking away of that when they return home leaves them unanchored. In the novel, The Sympathizer, a Vietnamese soldier complained that, “We have all kinds of ways to talk about life and creation. But when guys like me go and kill, everyone's happy we do it and no one wants to talk about it. It would be better if every Sunday before the priest talks a warrior gets up and tells people who he's killed on their behalf. Listening is the least they could do.” As a society we owe them more understanding of the burdens they do to benefit us. Americans treat veterans as they are objects. As a society people need to give our alms of inclusiveness. They are not victims hopelessly damaged by their service. Admit it, if citizens were faced with a veteran we would not know how to start a conversation. They need …show more content…

It is a bullet without the gun and soldiers do not receive the adequate support or care they need and deserve. Every sixty five minutes a veteran is committing suicide as the 2013 United States Department of Veterans affairs proclaimed. Soldiers need to receive better support, it is sickening to think how they fought for us and our country and we cannot return the favor. As a society it is our job to give them more of an understanding of they burdens they did to benefit us. A more meaningful engagement would be beneficial. The VA really has failed our veterans and when they are held with high standards, they involve themselves in opioids theft. Taking medics from the people who need it the most. Society is the problem. Soldiers do not feel welcomed when they return home and we need to do something to change

Show More
Related

  • Summary Of Sebastian Junger's Tribe: On Homecoming And Belonging

    977 Words  | 2 Pages

    The latter is explained from a deeper perspective. While Junger gave many examples of why PTSD rates in America were so high, the most captivating was: Today’s veterans often come home to find that although they are willing to die for their country, they’re not sure how to live for it. It’s hard to know how to live in a country that regularly tears itself apart along every possible ethnic and demographic boundary. In combat, soldiers all but ignore differences of race, religion and politics within their platoon. It’s no wonder they get so depressed when they come home.

    Read More

  • Post Traumatic Stress Disorder In U.S. Vietnam War Soldiers

    970 Words  | 2 Pages

    A Vietnam War veteran experienced many gruesome and horrifying events during their time of serving the army. Seeing such horrifying things affected their mental and emotional thinking “PTSD is defined as a re-experience of a traumatic event, for example, flashbacks. Anything can trigger a flashback a click, a movement, anything associated with the past event” (Cruz). Seeing such horrifying things affected their mental and emotional thinking. A soldier was told to forget what they saw and basically move on from it, but it only made it worse. Having everything “bottled up” makes it even harder to treat PTSD. U.S. soldiers had to live with the disorder on their own without any help. “The veterans experience combat related nightmares, anxiety, anger, depression, alcohol and/or drug dependency, all are symptoms of PTSD” (Begg). The symptoms occurred over long periods of time when that person has been in certain situations that he or she was not ready to be in. Some of these situations including the Vietnam veterans not feeling like their unit was together or united. “Soldiers were sent into replace other soldiers, which caused the other members of the group to make fun or haze them. The unit never developed as much loyalty to each other as they should have” (Paulson and Krippner). “Many of...

    Read More

  • The Role of Storytelling in The Things They Carried

    2570 Words  | 6 Pages

    The impact of the Vietnam War upon the soldiers who fought there was huge. The experience forever changed how they would think and act for the rest of their lives. One of the main reasons for this was there was little to no understanding by the soldiers as to why they were fighting this war. They felt they were killing innocent people, farmers, poor hard working people, women, and children were among their victims. Many of the returning soldiers could not fall back in to their old life styles. First they felt guilt for surviving many of their brothers in arms. Second they were haunted by the atrocities of war. Some soldiers could not go back to the mental state of peacetime. Then there were soldiers Tim O’Brien meant while in the war that he wrote the book “The Things They Carried,” that showed how important the role of story telling was to soldiers. The role of stories was important because it gave them an outlet and that outlet was needed both inside and outside the war in order to keep their metal state in check.

    Read More

  • The Negative Impact Of War In The Wars By Timothy Findley

    1408 Words  | 3 Pages

    Many individuals look at soldiers for hope and therefore, add load to them. Those that cannot rationally overcome these difficulties may create Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Tragically, some resort to suicide to get away from their insecurities. Troops, notwithstanding, are not by any means the only ones influenced by wars; relatives likewise encounter mental hardships when their friends and family are sent to war. Timothy Findley precisely depicts the critical impact wars have on people in his novel by showing how after-war characters are not what they were at the beginning.

    Read More

  • PTSD In Vietnam Veterans

    1786 Words  | 4 Pages

    Imagine living in despair after coming back home, dismayed from a war that got no appreciation. Robert Kroger once said in his quote, “The brave men and women, who serve their country and as a result, live constantly with the war inside them, exist in a world of chaos. But the turmoil they experience isn’t who they are, the PTSD invades their minds and bodies.” Eleven percent of Vietnam Veterans still suffer with symptoms of the terrifying disorder of PTSD (Handwerk). Vietnam Veterans struggle with the physiological effects of PTSD after war, which leads to despair and many deaths.

    Read More

  • Problems Of Reality The Vietnam War

    1554 Words  | 4 Pages

    During the Vietnam War the reality of warfare brought many soldiers back to a home that didn't want them. Their feelings torn by atrocities, the loss of friends, and the condition of loneliness only made the experience worse. Did the issues on the home front affect the issues on the frontline? The novel Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers is a perfect example of the conflict and diversity among other soldiers during the Vietnam War. It shows the reality many soldiers faced and how they dealt with conflicts back home while they were alone and afraid of death creeping up on them. With the reality of war taking its toll, soldiers coming home to a world they didn't know, a world that had changed and left them in Vietnam to fend for themselves. They slept with wives who didn't know even the smallest of their problems. From nightmares to remembering bad memories, Vietnam veterans suffered it all from extreme depression to the worst, suicide. The real world didn't know how to deal with them and just left them alone. The U.S. they left had changed on them. From people to the ways of life everything had changed and they didn't know how to deal with it.

    Read More

  • Causes and Symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

    943 Words  | 2 Pages

    With people who are suffering from PTSD their brain is still in overdrive long after the trauma has happened. They may experience things like flashbacks, nightmares, hallucinations, panic attacks, and deep depression. They tend to avoid things that remind them of their trauma and are constantly on high alert waiting for the next possible traumatic event to take place; in events such...

    Read More

  • Betrayal Exposed in Vietnam Perkasie, By Ehrhart

    1591 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Vietnam War was a controversial conflict that plagued the United States for many years. The loss of life caused by the war was devastating. For those who came back alive, their lives were profoundly changed. The impact the war had on servicemen would affect them for the rest of their lives; each soldier may have only played one small part in the war, but the war played a huge part in their lives. They went in feeling one way, and came home feeling completely different. In the book Vietnam Perkasie, W.D. Ehrhart describes his change from a proud young American Marine to a man filled with immense confusion, anger, and guilt over the atrocities he witnessed and participated in during the war.

    Read More

  • The Things They Carried 'By Tim O' Brien: An Analysis

    1640 Words  | 4 Pages

    Tina Chen’s critical essay provides information on how returning soldiers aren’t able to connect to society and the theme of alienation and displacement that O’Brien discussed in his stories. To explain, soldiers returning from war feel alienated because they cannot come to terms with what they saw and what they did in battle. Next, Chen discusses how O’Brien talks about soldiers reminiscing about home instead of focusing in the field and how, when something bad happens, it is because they weren’t focused on the field. Finally, when soldiers returned home they felt alienated from the country and

    Read More

  • Treatment Of Vietnam Veterans In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

    722 Words  | 2 Pages

    Tim O’Brien served in the Vietnam War, and his short story “The Things They Carried” presents the effects of the war on its young soldiers. The treatment of veterans after their return also affects them. The Vietnam War was different from other wars, because too many in the U.S. the soldiers did not return as heroes but as cruel, wicked, and drug addicted men. The public directs its distaste towards the war at the soldiers, as if they are to blame. The also Veterans had little support from the government who pulled them away from their families to fight through the draft. Some men were not able to receive the help they needed because the symptoms of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) did not show until a year

    Read More

  • Loss of soldier identity

    2537 Words  | 6 Pages

    ...ust deal with similar pains. Through the authors of these stories, we gain a better sense of what soldiers go through and the connection war has on the psyche of these men. While it is true, and known, that the Vietnam War was bloody and many soldiers died in vain, it is often forgotten what occurred to those who returned home. We overlook what became of those men and of the pain they, and their families, were left coping with. Some were left with physical scars, a constant reminder of a horrible time in their lives, while some were left with emotional, and mental, scarring. The universal fact found in all soldiers is the dramatic transformation they all undergo. No longer do any of these men have a chance to create their own identity, or continue with the aspirations they once held as young men. They become, and will forever be, soldiers of the Vietnam War.

    Read More

  • Soldiers and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

    924 Words  | 2 Pages

    Our soldiers not only risked life and limb for our country while serving in the Vietnam War, but they continue to suffer immensely. Americans as well as Vietnamese troops and civilians suffered great losses when it comes to casualties. Witnessing first-hand the pain and death of strangers and allies, isn’t something one is likely to forget. Post-Traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been one of the many repercussions of witnessing these gruesome events (Mental Health America). Veterans, their families, and the government have come together in combat in attempts to address the detrimental effects of PTSD.

    Read More

  • Trauma for Soldiers in "The Things They Carried" by Tim O’Brien

    884 Words  | 2 Pages

    Trauma can be defined as something that repeats itself. In The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, trauma recurs in soldiers for different reasons. However, although their reasons for trauma are different, the things they carried can symbolize all the emotions and pasts of these soldiers. One man may suffer trauma from looking through letters and photographs of an old lover, while another man could feel trauma just from memories of the past. The word “carried” is used repeatedly throughout The Things They Carried. Derived from the Latin word “quadrare,” meaning “suitable,” O’Brien uses the word “carried” not to simply state what the men were carrying, but to give us insight into each soldiers’ emotions and character, his past, and his present.

    Read More

  • The First World War: A Brief History with Documents

    860 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...though people believe that, those on the home front have it just as a bad as the soldiers, because they have to deal with the responsibilities of their husbands, there is nothing that can compare to what these men have gone through. The war itself consumed them of their ideology of a happy life, and while some might have entered the war with the hope that they would soon return home, most men came to grips with the fact that they might never make it out alive. The biggest tragedy that follows the war is not the number of deaths and the damages done, it is the broken mindset derives from being at war. These men are all prime examples of the hardships of being out at war and the consequences, ideologies, and lifestyles that develop from it.

    Read More

  • Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in Hemingway's Soldiers Home

    523 Words  | 2 Pages

    As a first hand observer of the Civil War, the great American Poet, Walt Whitman once said,"The real war [of the mind] will never get in the books."Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a horrible mental ailment that afflicts thousands of soldiers every year. Besides the fact that it is emotionally draining for the soldier, it also deeply alters their family and their family dynamics. Ernest Hemingway’s “Soldier's Home” illustrates how this happens. Harold Krebs returns home from World War I. He has to deal with becoming reaccustomed to civilian life along with relearning social norms. He must also learn about his family and their habits. The ramifications of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder have a ripple effect on the lives of not only the victim, but also the friends and family they relate to.

    Read More

More about Trauma In Soldiers

Open Document