Relationship Know Some Old Ptsd Vets?

[Deleted member 28812]

I just wondered if any of you knew some very old PTSD Vets and could tell me what their marriage lifes are like. They already had a long time to deal with some symptoms. How did they cope?

 

[Deleted member 1860]

Are you looking for inspiration? I think there is danger in assuming that time is a healer when dealing with an entire generation of sufferers who have most likely experienced the worst of the worst before this was even an official disorder.

 

[illusionist]

I've worked in care of the elderly and have seen, what I believed to be Ptsd , a few times. They were both vets and those who suffered childhood trauma....so they suffered all their lives. One I fought for because I could see he was always being unknowingly triggered by staff....which would set off his raging temper. Sadly, he was put in a psychiatric hospital and heavily medicated until he died, months later. The very fact they are in a locked building and can't get out, often triggers the very start of their full blown symptoms coming to a head again, by my observations. Regarding relationships, from what I've picked up in conversation from both sufferers and spouses of sufferers.....it was a very hard road for both of them..but times were different then where there wasn't really an option of opting out, for many, nor an understanding or treatment, of what was going on.

 

[Deleted member 28812]

Are you looking for inspiration?

Actually - yes!

 

[Ronin]

Honestly afaik everyone's marriages are still individual just as those people themselves.
There's just no recipe for functioning marriage, with or without PTSD involved. There's no easy pie for how-to-outwin PTSD, combat or not. If there were we wouldn't be here.

 

[Sighs]

Not sure how inspiring this will be but here goes...

My father and his three brothers were conscripted into a civil war in the early to mid 1970s. Their side lost. When you lose a civil war there is no home left to go to and no VA to (however inept) look after you. They were displaced persons. They self medicated with alcohol. Some of them beat their wives when drunk. Some of them beat their kids. The worst affected (looking at behaviour from the outside anyway) was the one who was in the war longest.

Three of the four of them are still married. Happily? How can anyone from the outside say?

 

[Deleted member 28812]

There's just no recipe for functioning marriage, with or without PTSD involved.

I am not searching for a recipe - just for some inspirational stories :)

I noticed that I know few old people with PTSD which must mean that it gets better over time.

 

[illusionist]

Lemontree....As is always the case, none of us see what goes on behind closed doors. I would love to think that things got easier for them....but from what I've witnessed, many suffered throughout life. Both in my previous work, and knew of vets that would come to my house as I grew up...those men well and truly continued to suffer. We can only hope that with better awareness and better treatment, that this won't happen in the future.

 

[Friday]

There was shell-shock... But aside from that extreme diagnosis? Most people were simply "changed by the war", "came home a changed man", "never got over the loss of her sons", "got all kinds of 'ideas' into her head after driving ambulance", "after the great war, she became very wild. She was a nurse, you know. She wasn't always this way," etc. And, at least on the Allies side? It was nearly 2 entire generations of young men. Men were actually shooting themselves / committing suicide if they were declared 4F / non-deployable and couldn't enlist.

After WWI, while Germany was plunged into starvation and a Great Depression?... We had the Roaring 20s. Jazz; The original PTSD music playlist. (Anything goes!). Sex-rules changed almost overnight. Crime skyrocketed. Alcohol use skyrocketed. The art scene exploded. Even Paris, with the Starving Winter? Might have been starving, but the parties raged on. Nearly the whole decade looked like one big fat Military-Unit-On-Leave. Conversely... Record numbers took to the wilderness, backcountry, bush, outback, plains. Either as hermits or gold/ copper/diamond & other mineral rushers. Lawless mining camps. Back of Beyond with only the rules you make. Meanwhile others pulled up stake and headed over to China's rebellion, or Russia's. Swept into either the ideals of communism, or another fight, or both.

Do I think it was all PTSD? Nope. But if we take modern numbers, at apx 20%? Inflate another 10% for years fighting without a break, to arrive at still a very conservative 30%? That's 1/3 of millions. And it very easily explains nearly a decade of living as if it were the last day of your life. The whole damn decade looks like 1 super clichéd PTSD Tailspin. Who knows how long this would have gone on for in the States, if the stock market hadn't crashed in the 30's? Suffered our own Great Depression?

In the States... We're taught that we created Hitler at Versailles. Forced both him and his rule into being during the Peace Accords. Our children shoulder that blame. I've gone to dozens of schools, and while the curriculum often changed depending on what state I was in? That was one concept that was true in every school I attended; WWII was our fault. We created Hitler. This, this is what happens when you take your revenge on a national scale. We also tend to shoulder a big damn chunk of the blame of the Halocaust; we turned boats of refugees away. Sent hundreds of thousands to their deaths. Worse, we sat on the sidelines and did nothing. For years. Even as Austria and others were being invaded. Even during the London Blitz. Even as report after report after report came in? We just wanted to be left alone. Leave us alone. Go away. f*ck the world. The actual "name" for this policy was "Isolationism". Still sounds a little PTSD-ish, doesn't it?

2 more generations of American men, one young, one not so young (vets of WWI) finally shipped off. And returned. Several years later.

Using the roughly 1/3 rule, again, and accounting for some overlap? Let's say roughly 40%-50% of the men in America would have had diagnosable (by today's standards). Women, too. But I don't have solid numbers of female combatants & medics & resistance & prison camp survivors & rape victims & refugees. So, just know that by leaving us out, these numbers are all nice and extra conservative.

For the Continent... It would be worse/higher. It wasn't just the adults fighting, but a couple generations of kids also picking up combatPTSD, living though 1 war, fighting through another. Or born into it.

You want to know Marriages in older Vets with PTSD?

Easy.

Roughly half of our Grandparents (if you're my age, great grandparents or parents if you're younger or older), one or both partners would likely have had combatPTSD. That's a couple hundred thousand marriages to pull data from at least. Probably several million. I'd have to look up population stats for 1900-1950 across a dozen countries to be more accurate. A whole lot, though, roughly half the population.

 

[Deleted member 28812]

You want to know Marriages in older Vets with PTSD?

Easy.

Roughly half of our Grandparents (if you're my age, great grandparents or parents if you're younger or older), one or both partners would likely have had combatPTSD. That's a couple hundred thousand marriages to pull data from at least. Probably several million. I'd have to look up population stats for 1900-1950 across a dozen countries to be more accurate. A whole lot, though, roughly half the population.

I actually tried to find some of the "outward symptoms of PTSD" I know in the elderly but I did not find them. To give an example: fear of crowds - old people where I am from do everything in crowds. You see them sitting in cafes witth their old buddies and they don't mind people staring at their backs, going "old people clubbing" - dancing to old people music, enjoying New Year's Eve.

My husband sometimes has a twitch of his face and I watched out for old people, who were twitchers and could not find any.
Conclusions: PTSD was unocmmon back then or they might have gotten cured as time went by or PTSD was different back then or they learned how to hide it better - but then it is hard to hide a twitch for example. The more the person tries to hide it the worse it becomes.

BTW not saying everybody with PTSD has a twitch but some do - so why do I never see a senior citizen with a twitch?

 

[illusionist]

If you Google lifelong effects of stress from world war I am sure you will find information on at least part of what you are seeking. Hope this helps.

 

[Sighs]

@Lemontree - I'm no expert but I suspect that the symptoms are different because the nature of the trauma was different. By that I mean that the wars were very different. In trench warfare a crowd might come to mean comfort - your buddies are around you - the enemy is across no man's land in their trenches. In modern warfare a crowd can conceal suicide bombers, IEDs, any one of your "allies" may be a danger to you (green on blue attacks). Obviously that is just one example.

Sadly I wouldn't conclude that time and time alone heals PTSD. I do think people become better at managing it over time, but I don't think it just fades away.