The Vietnam War was a place of death, destruction, and confusion. Not only was the war a failure, but many soldiers were forced to fight. This lead to many negative effects that I must bring to your attention in this paper. The negative effects on soldiers during and after the war were depression, regret, desensitization, insanity, and the loss of friends.…
According to statistics it is estimated that one in twenty of the surviving World War II veterans suffer from some level of post-traumatic stress disorder. Also known as PTSD, it occurs when one experiences a tragic, petrifying moment. War veterans suffer from this condition all the time. There are many ways to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, but not to completely get rid of it. Some treatments consist of medication, stress management classes, as well as different therapies. In war, you see and live through traumatic events. You foresee individuals that get there arm or legs blown off, on top of ones that lose their lives. Gunshots and explosions are implanted in your brain; there is no way to forget.…
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) causes a painful recollection of a past harrowing event that haunts victims for the rest of their lives and often causes extreme anxiety, depression, and in some cases, drug abuse and suicide. The suicide rates have increased effectually among soldiers, with about twenty-eight veterans killing themselves each day (Rosenshield). Many veterans are diagnosed with PTSD, and are forced to live with it for the rest of their lives. It is hard to understand the shift in a person before and after serving in war because the change is not physical, but mental. Though a person may seem perfectly normal, their mental make-up is morphed in a way that changes them forever. As time progresses, medical advances increase. Less and less soldiers are being injured and killed on the battlefield, however the damage being done to soldiers is not controlled due to PTSD. Until the 1980’s, medical professionals did not recognize PTSD as an illness. This being said, many veterans traumatized in the Vietnam war did not get the recognition they needed from psychiatric doctors and suffered alone. This rings true for both World Wars as well,…
Difficult situations are a part of life, and people everywhere must cope with difficult circumstances such as conflict in out lives. See Appendix 1 (Depression). But occasionally, people experience an event, which is so unexpected that it continues to have serious affects, long after it has happened. Like depression in general these events may include a traumatic event involving actual or threatened death to themselves or others. Also learning that a close friend is in danger or has died can cause this type of anxiety disorder (What Is A Depressive Disorder?). This condition is one of several known as an anxiety disorder. One significannot…
“Currently, Trauma Management Therapy is proving to be the most effective treatment for chronic combat-related PTSD. This form of therapy is a multicomponent approach, and it recognizes the complex nature of the often chronic nature of combat- related disorders” (Encyclopedia of Trauma…). Every VA medical center has Post-traumatic Stress Disorder specialists who provide treatment options to veterans suffering with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. They offer one-to-one mental health assessments and testing, one-to-one psychotherapy also involving family therapy sessions. They also provide group therapy, and incorporate medicine if needed. Along with all these options they also provide inpatient and outpatient programs geared toward specific needs. The number of Vietnam vets in VA treatment programs for PTSD more than tripled between 1999 and 2011, going from 90,695 to 299,076 (Carson).…
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and the Military Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a serious mental health disorder that must be better understood by the military. PTSD, battle fatigue, shell shock, and several other phrases describe a condition that has been observed in war veterans for centuries. In Achilles in Vietnam, Jonathan Shay studied veterans of the Vietnam War with PTSD and explained the similarities between these veterans and Achilles in the book The Iliad. PTSD is triggered by traumatic events that result in symptoms that can lead to very bad behavioral problems. Without proper awareness and understanding of how to identify and treat the disorder, many veterans will have difficulty functioning normally in society.…
Every day, hundreds of airmen, soldiers, and sailors are exposed to hazardous areas in combat zones. Throughout decades, thousands of service members have served their time in the military. Currently, there is an estimate of 1.3 million men and women serving active duty in the United States military (Gould, 2017). And of those millions, approximately 11,000+ service members within the American military are deployed in combat zones (Sisk, 2017). After a long and rigorous deployment, many troops return, only to begin another unsettled fight in their own home.…
In the face of abrupt danger, it is common to want to escape from the surroundings. Today, the results of Vietnam have scared many loyal soldiers who now suffer from PTSD. The events of the Vietnam war are rarely spoken of by vets and still affect many individual’s views of America today. The way the soldiers were treated after the war has gone down in history as one of the most dishonorable acts against our troops who proudly fought for America despite the conflicted views of the public. Our troops are deeply wounded from the war and from the way they were treated when they returned from the war. After the Vietnam war, many expressed their opinions and fictional experiences of it and addressed that PTSD had indeed effected many and was an issue that needed to be…
The dread and anxiety about losing a friend or a ship or even your own life was heartbreaking. This fear for some even consumed the soldier’s lives after the war if they survived. Many suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome. As time dragged on, the soldiers finally came to realize the reality of the true ugliness and pointlessness of the Vietnam War.…
Hautzinger and, Scandlyn’s “Decentering PTSD: A War Outgrows a Diagnosis” is about post traumatic stress disorder(PTSD) and how it's an invisible wound among soldiers .Many soldiers believed that in order to come out of the war those that are claiming to have PTSD are lying. PTSD is socially or culturally constructed. American physicians said many soldiers came to them about physical abnormalities who actually had none. And that is a sign of PTSD. There is a difference of PTSD in today’s soldiers and soldiers from the Civil War. Soldiers from the Civil War showed disturbance of the heart and today’s soldiers show disturbance of their behavior. During World War I PTSD was known as shell shock which many believed happened due to exposure to blasts. They were blamed for malingering or escaping the war and the punishment is severe for not showing ‘enough’ patriotism, such as electric shock so that they will be back into service. However in 1980, PTSD was considered to be normal. Those who engage in wars suffers from PTSD only they can understand and feel what it is or how it is therefore their pain is often ignored by the rests around them. Those in charge instead of being suspicious of those who suffers from it should provide treatment and compensation.…
A large number of people encounter daily stress in their lives but it does not mount to the stress of living with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. People who suffer with this condition live their everyday lives with constant fear of the past. Most cannot deal with this transition after experiencing a tragic event causing them to seek out help from others, hence they cannot do it alone. Many Vietnam War veterans experienced tragedies and witnessed emotionally disturbing events leading them to develop Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.…
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is characterized by the re-experiencing of an extremely traumatic event accompanied by symptoms of increased arousal and by avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma . Cowley says that PTSD is as old as war but it did not become an official diagnosis until the 1980’s. PTSD’s causes are still murky and…
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a type of anxiety disorder. PTSD is a serious condition that can develop when a person has experienced or witnessed a traumatic or terrifying event in which serious physical harm occurred or was threatened. Usually the body is able to recover to normal levels of hormones and chemicals the body releases due to the stress. But with a person with PTSD the body keeps releasing the stress hormones and chemicals. An example of PTSD could be a soldier whose been to war. For a person with PTSD, the anxiety and over whelming thoughts of the event can continue and even increase over time. There are three types of PTSD symptoms: Reliving the event, which disturbs day-to-day activity, Avoidance, and Hyper arousal. Treatment for PTSD involves talk therapy (counseling), medicines, or both. The feelings felt by PTSD patients become so strong that many aspects of the individual’s life can be affected. Performing a simple task, like brushing their teeth can become overwhelming (A.D.A.M. Medical Encyclopedia, 2013).…
Post-traumatic stress disorder, according to WebMD, is a condition in which a person has gone through or seen a life-altering or a terrifying event either physically or emotionally (Posttraumatic Stress Disorder). For normal people, after something traumatic happens, they experience shock, anger, nervousness, fear, and guilt. For them, that feeling goes away after a short period of time. People who suffer with PTSD, those feelings last on…
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder seems far more prevalent in Vietnam War veterans than in those of other wars: fifteen out of one hundred Vietnam Veterans have combat-related PTSD as compared to one out of twenty World War II veterans, a ten percent difference (“How Common is PTSD”). Although it is nearly impossible to pinpoint the root cause for the rise in PTSD in this generation of veterans, there are many factors that could have contributed to this rising issue. Many used to believe that these veterans were simply young, immature boys dragged into the war by the draft and were unable to cope with the pressures of combat: the average age for a soldier in Vietnam was nineteen and in World War II it was twenty-six (Roark 838). However, every…