Just Watched American Sniper. !

[Eleanor]

I actually knew that, and somehow thought that you had to be symptomatic for at least 6 months for it to "count" as combat PTSD. If it resolves within the six month window they tend to just call it PTS. I was starting the "clock" for Kyle after his I don't know, second or third deployment when he was quite checked out, but the three odd minutes they showed of "home time" was not much... so my impression was that he'd been symptomatic for a Loooong time. But, the devil is in the details. If he got better those times, as was your experience, but got worse symptoms every go around then it fits the pattern better. Of course they didn't show much of anything about those times. And given the incredibly compressed time frame of the film, (and the fact that they were in San Diego with no seasons to speak of to give you a sense of the passage of time) I think I was assuming that the time he was badly off after his last deployment and then got started at the VA was ... like a year. But it makes more sense if that time frame was on the order of months.

Even so, for a movie that the director intended to show "the price paid by those left behind"... I didn't see it. Lots of cool exciting combat getting to kill the bad guys... but not so much content around it.