Article About Ptsd... Can Someone Tell Me If I'm Missing Something?

[bell]

Okay, I've read a lot of messed up stuff about PTSD, but this article really honestly has gotten my goat.

Am I missing something? Or does it really honestly say PTSD is made up, likening it to people making up being involved in train accidents? (AND to publish this on Memorial Day no less!)

I contacted the author even to see if I misunderstood the story he was trying to tell in this interview, but for now, am just seething at the disrespect all 'round, to both veterans and people with PTSD.

 

[Meadowsweet]

I think, on the one hand he is saying that activists who have spoken up against war have been written out of history by the prejudice against mental health.

Then I think he's saying that media has created a wounded hero character of veterans. So again, as human beings and individuals, their views about war, based on real experiences are being diminished by this Hollywood characterisation.

At this point, it's worth noting that he is an anti-war activist, and his bias is towards spreading his message. And I do agree that diminishing veterans voice about what war actually is, because they have PTSD is wrong.

However, in an attempt to support his point and have the views of anti-war veterans heard, he comes up with a lot of unsubstantiated rubbish about the world wars and the UK.

I think he would have been better to argue that people with PTSD should not have their views and opinions put down as 'just PTSD' as if they don't matter.

That's my take on it anyway.

 

[Hashi]

does it really honestly say PTSD is made up, likening it to people making up being involved in train accidents?

I don't think he's saying that about PTSD or train accidents. I understand it as saying that more people are claiming it than the number of actual cases. What started people saying (untruthfully) that they'd been in train accidents was that other people really had been in them. I see his take on PTSD as the same - there is such a thing, and for various reasons more people claim it than actually have it.

He seems to be saying people are using it culturally rather than as a medical diagnosis. The fact that you went to war being used as an indicator (actually a predictor, in advance) that you'll have PTSD. Rather than the fact that you have a diagnosis. Because "war hero" is becoming synonymous with PTSD as a war wound.

I'm not sure I agree with him but I don't think he's saying PTSD is made up.

 

[Mina]

I only read about half the article, and I'll admit...I was rather confused by most of the questions posed, and his responses. I'm not dumb, but wow - I got lost a lot. Maybe I'll try again later.

Whether or not he's actually comparing railway spine to PTSD in veterans wasn't clear from the half of the article I read. It does sound to me like he's saying that railway/railroad spine was often an illness with no actual injuries to account for it...then goes on to say that it influences the study of PTSD today:
Historically, “railway spine” is important because it carries forward to influence the study of female hysteria in the late 1880s, shell shock in WWI veterans, and PTSD and TBI cases of today’s war veterans. Many cases of TBI, for example, cannot be associated with any other injuries that should be visible if a brain injury had actually been sustained.

My overall impression from what I read is that the author thinks veterans are jumping on the PTSD bandwagon even if there isn't a basis for them having it. Basically, it's "popular" now.

 

[bell]

Thanks for your thoughts and your response, @Meadowsweet and @Hashi. :)

I don't know why this one set me off so bad, but it really irked me the wrong way... especially as it was published on Memorial Day.

And I heard back from the author, who then proceeded to tell me that there were less cases of PTSD in WWII than WWI, and a lot of battlefield trauma in the former and that for WWII vets, PTSD healed ">* readily." And that the causes for PTSD are "complex/psycho-social." The last bit I agree with, the other parts, not so much.

*I took this to mean "more than."

 

[Springer80]

in an attempt to support his point and have the views of anti-war veterans heard, he comes up with a lot of unsubstantiated rubbish

Totally. His answers in the article sway from the cultural narrative of war to the history of psychology to the anti war movement to the history of trauma literature etc. It's essentially not coherent. Personally I think it's more than a little irresponsible to print this kind of stuff in the rough state that it's in, without rigorous research and citation. However he's covering so much ground that I very much doubt he could manage that properly.

For instance, the poems of Siegfried Sassoon are taught in schools in the UK and are covered as part of the curriculum in English Literature. Yes he was able to convey a political standpoint but I wouldn't say that removed him from the category of being 'traumatised'. It seems this guy has a binary view of traumatised/politicized, when in fact it's probably a finely balanced sliding scale.

For the most part I wasn't angered by the article just a bit bemused about the clarity, or lack of, his point. That was until the end when he seems to unequivocally say that PTSD is psychosomatic. Harmful talk. He should be counting himself lucky not speculating personal theories that potentially stigmatise a group of people who need help,

 

[Barberian]

Paul Rosenburg, the author of that article has absolutely no idea what it is like to serve his country, to serve in a war zone or to suffer from an injury either medical, mental or both. Why he thinks his ideas hold any weight on this topic is a mystery to me. He might as well be trying to project himself as an expert on the pains of giving birth to a group of mothers who had traumatic deliveries. Unless you live it, you can't really understand it.

If he really wants to be an expert, he should get out from behind his protected little desk in his protected little building, city, county, state, country and enlist in the Army or Marine Corps and volunteer to serve in the front lines. Nowhere that I can find does he even state he has had a conversation with a veteran on this topic. I might even respect his wishes to voice his opinion on this topic then. As it is, he is just another talking head that wants everyone to listen to his misinformed and *malformed opinions, not facts, opinions.

* (Merriam-Webster Online - Malformed - not having the normal or expected shape especially because of a problem in the way something has developed or grown).

I personally had no inclination nor expectation of developing PTSD. When I joined in '86 the thought of going to war was almost laughable. The Soviet Union was the only real threat, and it was understood we would most likely NOT go to war with them as between us we could barbque the world far too many times over with all our combined nuclear weapons. I'm a survivor and had always landed on my feet to some very dangerous and traumatic events prior to enlisting. I had someone pull a big hunting knife on me that was going to kill me. I stood my ground and had a shouting match with him until I scared him enough to leave even though he was the one with the big knife. I won't go into other things that happened to me prior to enlisting. So, no. I wasn't thinking I may develop PTSD.

The conditions that I believe caused my PTSD, at the time I just told myself others had endured worse and still did their jobs and I just did my job as best I could. There were several things that added up over time, until the straw that broke the camels back three years after I retired. The damage was done while I served, but as is not uncommon, the harder someone tries to bury the damage, the worse it comes out later.

I'm sure most people who join the military feel the same. That they will beat the odds and come out of the war intact and not suffering mental issues. If people had any idea what a living hell PTSD is, and they WOULD get it, they wouldn't join. To think otherwise is as delusional as Mr. Rosenburg has become.

I could state many well documented reason why current levels of PTSD are different for the current wars ~vs~ past wars including average age of enlistment, average age of those serving, the number of tours is much higher now than WW1, 2, and Vietnam. I could go on and on, but this really is starting to stress me, and I've been fighting being triggered as I write this out, I'm remembering my own life experience in the military. I try to back up what I write about by looking up any facts I'm trying to put in my post.

-------

I tried to find information about his higher education and was unable to find anything about him other than his current employment at Salon and he is/was an editor at a bi-weekly newspaper. Does he hold any degrees or licence(s) for practicing mental health? If not what education and training is he evaluating that data he has found on the topic. If he was using established psychiatric standards to evaluate the data he has found, he would realize his argument is flawed to it's core. He is hand picking crappy research and ignoring many well respected studies. With that being said, it is IMHO only his untrained and highly biased OPINION he is stating. Why does his OPINION matter?

People like this make me sick, literally, I'm feeling much worse now than before I read and researched his article. He is trying to co-opt and replace most of what his article covers for his own anti- military and anti-veteran agenda.

And yes, his and Salon's timing is amongst the worst ever, on Memorial Day. Disrespecting the people who gave all, so people like him are able to write crap like that.

My two copper.

 

[Justmehere]

I read the article... His political bias leaks out all over the place. He makes a valid point that people should not self diagnose or overly pathologize people, including ourselves... but then he takes it too far and ties it into so many things that are just not founded in fact.

He basically claims war vets make up that they have PTSD, or are convinced by pop culture that they have PTSD, because it is seen as a glamorous illness that makes them even more of heroes, and their battle/war all the more justified.

The author talks a lot about of pop culture, but seems clueless about military culture. The author apparently has never really hung out with a group of vets. Many vets who have PTSD feel ashamed about it. Some even kill themselves instead of asking for help. It's not generally seen by vets with PTSD that the PTSD itself makes them a hero or that the PTSD means battle/war was all the more justified.

If he writes like the article is written, I can't imagine he will be selling many books. He's very hard to follow. I take some solace in that.

 

[shimmerz]

If he really wants to be an expert, he should get out from behind his protected little desk in his protected little building, city, county, state, country and enlist in the Army or Marine Corps and volunteer to serve in the front lines.

@Barberian billiant. I find it ignorant to have someone who has not experienced the atrocities of war (at home or in the battlefield) to have make statements regarding any type of illness. One must have lived it to be taken seriously.

@bell - the irony of the Memorial Day (let alone the fireworks and planes that scream around in the air which add insult to injury to those who are to be honoured on such a day when all know this freaks those with PTSD out) is beyond comprehension. I completely agree with you. Idiocy. Ignorance. Many other bad words inserted here.

 

[Laura 2]

Paul Rosenburg, the author of that article has absolutely no idea what it is like to serve his country, to serve in a war zone or to suffer from an injury either medical, mental or both. Why he thinks his ideas hold any weight on this topic is a mystery to me.
studies. With that being said, it is IMHO only his untrained and highly biased OPINION he is stating. Why does his OPINION matter?

People like this make me sick, literally, I'm feeling much worse now than before I read and researched his article. He is trying to co-opt and replace most of what his article covers for his own anti- military and anti-veteran agenda.
*
And yes, his and Salon's timing is amongst the worst ever, on Memorial Day. Disrespecting the people who gave all, so people like him are able to write crap like that.

.

All very well put. Thank you - and thank you also for your service.

This article really got to me too, yet I'm not a vet. I am, though, the child of vets. All, including my wonderful stepfather, with frontline/combat experience before I was born. My paratrooper father had his legs shot as he was jumping into enemy territory and my mother was a medic who treated many with harrowing injuries. Their war dominated my whole childhood in one way or another, it was the backdrop to our existence. Their young lives were totally messed up, father's more so (hence his family life and the lives of all his children to some degree or other). Likewise even my wonderful stepfather and, later I was to discover, my badly affected father-in-law whose secret trauma messed up his wife and children horribly.

The only reason there were 'fewer cases of PTSD' back then is because most of the trauma went unrecognised and ailing vets were simply uncared for. Decades later, when we were grown, my mother went to work helping dreadfully maimed and ageing vets of Japanese atrocities to get compensation and benefits...decades later. It took years for their injuries to be recognised and to receive the help they so deserved.

Yet the media did its 'vets as heroes' thing even back then. I guess it's easier and cheaper to see young soldiers as marvellous young invincibles who miraculously spring back from anything they gets thrown at them. You don't have to see them as real people with real suffering and real families that suffer fallout too, which is also what enables mad politicians to send them off to war in the first place. It's a centuries old, toxic myth which has and continues to cost so many lives.

But because of my parents and their service, I am very proud of our militaries - if not the wars they are directed to fight - and all the young people who do their best whilst arrogant, ill-informed pundits stay home in the safety of their cosy little sinecures, sniping at them from, as you say Barberian, behind the comfort of, IMHO, their perverse though highly 'educated' ignorance.

As for Rosenberg, Lembcke and Salon? Disgusting to my mind. What a travesty they - and others - have wrought of the freedom you struggled to ensure for us. Now I really know why so many Americans rail against 'liberals'. Lembcke is an associate professor at a small Jesuit Catholic school in MA (make of that what you will).

 

[bell]

Thanks for your responses, and @Barberian, I'm so sorry that I made you feel worse! Yikes!

Reading the article then listening to his ridiculous arguments were just too much yesterday. I think that if it had been published on any other day I'd just be mildly annoyed, but on Memorial Day it really really got to me thinking about all who made the ultimate sacrifice and those that were willing to... and the whole "made up" aspect seemed disrespectful to the core.

As for the way it was written... well, that's another bone to pick. :)

 

[Barberian]

@bell You didn't make me feel worse, please be assured of that. People like the author of that article and their hurtful agenda just make me furious. Anyone who willfully hurts others when they are down regardless of the cause makes me furious.