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News Claims Ptsd Is Being Faked In Military

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Yeah, for sure PTSD is a "new" thing

The Farmer Remembers the Somme


Vance Palmer


Will they never fade or pass!
The mud, and the misty figures endlessly coming
In file through the foul morass,
And the grey flood-water ripping the reeds and grass,
And the steel wings drumming.


The hills are bright in the sun:
There's nothing changed or marred in the well-known places;
When work for the day is done
There's talk, and quiet laughter, and gleams of fun
On the old folks' faces.


I have returned to these:
The farm, and the kindly Bush, and the young calves lowing;
But all that my mind sees
Is a quaking bog in a mist - stark, snapped trees,
And the dark Somme flowing.


Read that poem, read it twice if need be, and tell me that PTSD is a new thing, or this one:

Dulce et Decorum Est

Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! -- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under I green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, --
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

It is there, in World War One poetry in particular, but also in later fights, one example would be this one:

Men in Green

David Campbell

Oh, there were fifteen men in green,
Each with a tommy-gun,
Who leapt into my plane at down;
We rose to meet the sun.

We set our course towards the east
And climbed into the day
Till the ribbed jungle underneath
Like a giant fossil lay.

We climbed towards the distant range
Where two white paws of cloud
Clutched at the shoulders of the pass;
The green men laughed aloud.

They did not fear the ape-like cloud
That climbed the mountain crest
And hung from twisted ropes of air
With thunder in their breast.

They did not fear the summer's sun
In whose hot center lie
A hundred hissing cannon shells
For the unwatchful eye.

And when on Dobadura's field
We landed, each man raised
His thumb towards the open sky;
But to their right I gazed.

For fifteen men in jungle green
Rose from the kunai grass
And came towards the plane. My men
In silence watched them pass;
It seemed they looked upon themselves
In Time's prophetic glass.

Oh, there were some leaned on a stick
And some on stretchers lay,
But few walked on their own two feet
In the early green of day.

They had not feared the ape-like cloud
That climbed the mountains crest;
They had not feared the summer's sun
With bullets for their breast.

Their eyes were bright, their looks were dull,
Their skin had turned to clay.
Nature had met them in the night
And stalked them in the day.

And I still think of men in green
On the Soputa track
With fifteen spitting tommy-guns
To keep a jungle back.
 
Unfortunately, many people don't realize(or is it accept?) that there was a condition before there was a name for it. Or that the name may have been different. Then, just because information is now getting out there, they think that it is just hype or "the latest thing". Something recently made up.

MS was at first not considered "real" and before they gave it a name, they just chalked it up to women's hysteria. I'm sure that the people who suffered from PTSD in the past were probably just thought of people off their rockers.

They should embrace the fact that they now have a name and understanding of it. Unfortunately, there will always be naysayers for everything. I hate listening to those people, even while trying to remain open to the opinions of others. Sometimes I just need to tune them out. I guess I'm thoroughly disappointed that some of those people exist in my own family.
 
I'd have to suggest that quite a few of the veterans from the first world war were seriously affected by what they had seen, heard and known, the difficulty is of course that no-one actually cared very much.

Rates of domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Stace)

and even suicide, for example Hugo Throssell VC

(http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/throssell-hugo-vivian-hope-8806)

and Martin O'Meara VC (http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/omeara-martin-7908), was off the charts by todays views.

Severe mental illness can be covered up if one drinks heavily enough, or it can be explained away if it cannot be covered up. What coincides with the advent of a 'label' for the disease/traumatic injury is society's relatively new found distaste and disrespect of those engaging in alcoholism, domestic violence, public violence and acts of blatant stupidity.
 
Off topic. If you want to read about the history, [DLMURL]https://www.ptsdforum.org/c/wiki/history-of-posttraumatic-stress-disorder/[/DLMURL]. If you want to discuss it, start a new thread please.
 
What coincides with the advent of a 'label' for the disease/traumatic injury is society's relatively new found distaste and disrespect of those engaging in alcoholism, domestic violence, public violence and acts of blatant stupidity.

I've lost track of the number of times I've read this and tried to understand what you are saying. Please put it another way, in different words.
 
I will attempt to explain - it may help to clarify how it strays very little from the topic after all. I'm sorry, I went to law school, so I've had to learn how judges write some fairly otiose, hard to understand, drivel and it affects your brain after a while (try reading Justice Fullagar in the Communist Party case for example, a massive discussion about laws and windmills, quite does your head in).

One of the major factors in the current bunfight over PTSD rates in the military is that people struggle to understand how the rates are so very high from comparatively low-intensity conflicts (eg. Timor). While I do not agree with these people, they do point to the rather major differences in the intensity and duration of exposure and the rates of 'illness' arising therefrom.

What I was attempting to point out is that the rates of mental illness arising from the high intensity exposure from WWI & WWII, compared to the difficulties experienced after the Wars by those exposed, suggest that there was gross under-reporting of difficulties. The rates at which veterans fell into alcoholism, drug addiction, domestic violence and 'chronic mania', or suicide, suggest that the exposure was at least as damaging as the lower intensity conflicts experienced more recently.

The fact is society no longer tolerates (or is willing to ignore) or explains away chronic alcoholism, drug addiction, violence and domestic violence, or for that matter 'chronic mania' or suicide, without looking for a cause for these results. That this need to attribute causation corresponds coincidentally with the advent of a convenient label, does not change the fact that the illness is real, or in any way detract from the difficulties experienced by those suffering with, or otherwise coping with the illness. It simply means that finally the actual cost in lives and suffering, both immediate and consequential, are being understood and fully reported.

I had a Great-Uncle, the man was buried three times at Pozzieres and wounded in the August offensive. He spent the rest of his life in and out of jail, an alcoholic and died alone. He is not reckoned as one of the casualties of WWI. I suspect that nowadays he most assuredly would be, he would have been treated, he may not have lived a wasted life as a result of events in his youth, that is my point. The facts that rates of diagnosis are exponentially higher now than might have been expected from examination of previous conflicts should be seen for what it is, a massive advance in how people are treated and how the consequences of events are understood.
 
The very sad part is continually the Telly has wrapped PTSD into their programming! So what are they doing besides using it as the latest buzz!

JMHO they need to put some action behind their motives, show me the money!
 
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