Doctors, chaplains and ethicists have begun to publicly recognize the
Love and humanity that lives in soldiers suffering Post Traumatic Stress
Disorder (PTSD). "In many ways, a soldier suffering post traumatic stress disorder is maybe a particularly ethical healthy human being who demonstrates real sensitivity to the fact he has killed someone or been subjected to terrible violence," one doctor said on NBC News.
But in World War II, General George Patton famously slapped a soldier suffering PTSD which Patton thought of, at the time, as simply "cowardice." Cowardice exists, of course, but it may not look anything like what Patton thought.
How do caregivers deal with PTSD?…
A recent report released by the Rand Corporation on NBC indicates that up to 300,000 soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan (20 percent) are experiencing PTSD and other forms of depression. Could this be a sign of a rising sense of humanity among civilized human beings?
Most of us don’t appreciate the cost of freedom. As one returning soldier said on the NBC show, Dateline, "People want to eat the hamburger. They don’t want to know how it was made."
We want freedom. We don’t always want to know how it was won. We want our health, we don’t necessarily want to identify with what the nurses and doctors in the operating room went through to bring us that health.
Parts of our health care system are already failing our returning soldiers. PTSD plagued Iraq veteran Jeffrey Lennon (left) told the Boston Globe back in 2007 that delays in receiving treatment through the overwhelmed VA system are "where you fall apart." It took longer for Lennon to receive treatment than it did to sign him up for the war that would so severely damage his life.
The more caregivers can understand that PTSD as a reflection of humanity, the more they may be enabled to deliver the kind of compassion these returning soldiers so desperately need. When those coming back from Iraq demonstrate anger or stare back at nurses with empty eyes, perhaps we may see beyond those eyes to the horror these men and women were subjected to, a horror they confronted on our behalf.
These are men and women who care about what they have done and what they have seen. Instead of big smiles, they face the world with a vision scarred by violence. They were once children taught to give Love. Now they have seen fear and horror. And because they clung to their humanity, these images break their hearts. Now, they need to heal.
-Erie Chapman
Journal of Sacred Work 
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