News Combat And Peacekeeping Troups Suffer PTSD

[Deleted member 541]

Combat and peacekeeping troops suffer PTSD
LONDON, Ontario (UPI) -- Veterans' well-being is affected by post-traumatic stress disorder whether they are deployed as combat or peacekeeping troops, Canadian researchers said.

Dr. J. Donald Richardson of The University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, and colleagues studied 125 male deployed Canadian Forces peacekeeping veterans who were referred for psychiatric assessment.

The average age of the men was 41, and they averaged 16 years of military service. The most common military theater in which they served was the Balkan states -- Bosnia, Croatia, the former Yugoslavia and Kosovo -- with 83 percent having exposure to combat or a war zone.

The study, published in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, found anxiety disorders such as PTSD are associated with impaired emotional well-being, and this applies just as much to peacekeeping veterans as to combat veterans.

"This finding is important to clinicians working with the newer generation of veterans, as it stresses the importance of including measures of quality of life when evaluating veterans to better address their rehabilitation needs," Richardson said in a statement. "It is not enough to measure symptom changes with treatment; we need to objectively asses if treatment is improving their quality of life and how they are functioning in their community."

 

[Ruth09]

I have issues stemming from my service in Bosnia. But, according to the Vet Center, it doesn't count and I'm not eligible for an services, including counseling.

 

[tgrl]

The problem is there are really, really severe cases of combat PTSD out there. When you have a veteran who is in heavy combat over a long period of time, they can have something that's quite severe, much more than anyone realizes. But the VA knows, so they are probably comparing to that.

But I think you should get counselling. Try a local vet centre. They offer counselling to vets.

 

[CCurry]

I totally believe that would be quite true, as long as they are exposed to traumatic events, the smell of death is still the smell of death no matter what. Although many of my bf's flashbacks are related to him taking lives and when he closes his eyes aside from the pitch black he sees many (scared, shocked, angry) eyeballs of those lives he took. So there might be an added component to actually being in control of the trigger but I think it's all the same.

 

[tgrl]

My father's battle record showed battle after battle, ambush after ambush and causulites for all, over a long period of time.

When they put provisions in place for the most and longest combat trauma exposed, then they'll be doing those vets justice.