I think the problem lies in exposure. People have been told time and time again that people in the military get PTSD. It's been around for a long time for soldiers (battle fatigue, gross stress reaction, combat fatigue, shell shock, soldier's heart) but there has not really been much exposure of the concept to do with childhood abuse. I suppose you could also add the fact that childhood abuse is not something that people talk about. It is something that people keep quiet about, and as a culture there is a lot of silence on the subject, especially regarding the ongoing effects in later life.
Just as an example, I can think of 5 movies about military PTSD right off the top of my head, but I cannot think of one single movie about childhood abuse PTSD... silence
Thanks for this post, Jagged Angel and thank you, Nicolette for your original post.
I'm sorry to say that I feel very little sympathy for those of us who suffer from war-related PTSD because, quite simply, they signed up for it. Although, the amount of young men who sign up to the army because they feel they have no better career option, certainly says something for our education system.
However, the amount of sympathy and exposure in the media they get also makes me very angry. People here in the UK are very vocal on supporting our troops but if you try and encourage them to support charities like the NSPCC, they are curiously silent.
Like Jagged Angel, I think it's because part of our culture is not to talk about child abuse and if the issue is pressed, people will either find someone to blame (e.g. social workers) or, less likely, throw money at the problem until it goes away. When the death of Baby P came to light here, the first people the media pointed fingers at were the social workers, not the abusers. It was as though they were not accountable for their actions, which was obviously not the case.
I think part of the problem is that people just don't know how to deal with the issue of child abuse. Blaming is hardly constructive. My mother used to threaten to kill my father if she saw him again because of what he did to me (which never made sense to me, because his sexual abuse was actually no worse than her psychological and physical abuse) and all it really did was upset me. Ignoring it is also not a constructive way of combatting the abuse that takes place in our society.
What there really needs to be is more information available to people who have to interact with the abused on a daily basis and I'm not just talking about carers. I'm talking about your boss, your colleagues and your friends. People who maybe don't understand why you act the way you do sometimes. If people understood how child abuse effects people better then they might be able to deal with the issue in a more constructive way.
