Stress Disorder In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

War - After the War Post-traumatic Stress Disorder is a severe anxiety disorder developed after exposure to an event that resulted in psychological trauma. Post-traumatic Stress Disorder has been around for thousands of years recognized as battle fatigue, accident neurosis, and shell shock. Although it wasn’t until 1980 that the American Psychiatric Association added Post-traumatic Stress Disorder to the third edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III) classification scheme (Friedman, MD, PhD). Post-traumatic Stress Disorder can expose itself in many different ways, through anger and incidents of rage and violence, as depression, nightmares, feelings of guilt, and often goes along with substance
In “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’brien he conveys that not only did the soldiers fighting in Vietnam carry the material things they needed to survive, they also carried around the psychological baggage of the war and the things they were faced with daily. O’brien shows readers through his writing that Vietnam had a way of altering you. You were no longer the person you were when you arrived there. In order to survive soldiers had to close themselves off and become numb to what was going on around them. This is destined to cause serious psychological
“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).
The government is still creating more programs to better aid veterans in dealing with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. Staff writer, Rob Carson for The News Tribune states in his article, “Over the past five years, Congress has added billions of dollars for mental health care to the VA budget and hired 7,000 additional mental health professionals at VA clinics and