\u201cPTSD Then and Now\u201d<\/p>\n
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By: Stephen Blais<\/p>\n
Module 3 contained some of the most interesting topic of our studies throughout this course, in my opinion. While reading the material which included symptoms and effects that trauma has on our brain, it immediately brought to mind the biographical war movie “American Sniper,” which depicts the life and death of war hero Chris Kyle.\u00a0There is a scene in the film\u00a0where Kyle is sitting in a chair in his living room. Kyle is watching a blank screen while the film the depicts scenes from the war during one of his previous tours of duty. There seems to be some type of cookout or birthday party taking place at Kyle\u2018s house however his mind is clearly elsewhere and he\u00a0is unable to focus on\u00a0 –\u00a0 or enjoy the celebration going on around him.\u00a0 The horrors of the war were preventing him from enjoying what should have been a joyous occasion.\u00a0 It seems to me that Kyle was experiencing dissociation and reliving.<\/p>\n
According to our text, “If elements of the trauma are replayed again and again, the accompanying stress hormones engrave those memories ever more deeply in the mind.\u00a0 Ordinary day to day events becomes less compelling, not being able to deeply take in what is going on around them makes it impossible to feel fully alive.\u00a0 It becomes harder to feel the joys and aggravations of ordinary life…Not being fully alive in the present keeps them more firmly imprisoned in the past” (Van Der Kolk, p. 67, 2015).\u00a0 For some reason this particular calm scene always stood out to me in an otherwise action-packed movie.<\/p>\n
Growing up, I had a close relationship with both of my biological grandfathers who served in World War II. One served as an anti-aircraft gunner and interpreter under the direct command of General Douglas MacArthur. The other served as a turret gunner, who ended up getting shot down in the Pacific, but thankfully survived. The lessons of this class as it relates to trauma kept bringing me back to the countless discussions and stories which both of them told me of their service. Soldiers who are deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan are gone for anywhere from about six months to one year per tour. Soldiers such as my grandparents were deployed for over three straight years! I can only imagine the troubles with PTSD that they must have faced when they returned home from the war. It also makes you wonder which is worse, the constant redeployment of troops that our military faces today, where soldiers serve multiple tours or being deployed for years at a time.<\/p>\n
An interesting concept in to the difference between PTSD in World War II soldiers and that of current day soldiers in the finality associated with World War II. According to Andrew Pomerantz, the chief psychiatrist of the VA in Virginia in his discussion about the aftermath of World War II, \u201cSociety didn\u2019t want to hear it. You don\u2019t want to hear that your hero who has just come back from winning the war is troubled by what he did over there and the people he bombed, the people he shot. People didn\u2019t want to hear that kind of thing. All anybody wanted to hear at the time was: Isn\u2019t this wonderful? We won. We\u2019ve saved the world. Thank you.\u201d Soldiers during WWII surely suffered from PTSD, but some may have been more able to rationalize their acts of war, because we were attacked and we won the war. Today\u2019s soldiers are fighting a war that has no end in sight, and often times they cannot differentiate from friend or foe in the battlefield.<\/p>\n
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