Letters to the Editor
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framing trauma
one thing, glenn - i wish that more people would realize that ptsd and trauma are physical events- with emotional and psychological symptoms and components- and need to be treated as such. i'd love to see you jump on that bandwagon with me. the first thing it would do is reduce the stigma still associated with having totally natural reactions to trauma, and also hopefully there will be a movement towards more effective treatment. here's one highly effective one, and i believe the organization is working to get the military to adopt their methods.
http://www.traumahealing.com/
and as for the paperwork being too daunting - have any of these guys ever worked in the real world??? used a computer??? christ, i bet there are thousands of dba's and logistics managers who could do the soldier time tracking in their sleep.
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American War Culture in a Nutshell
Congratulations on a very insightful piece of journalism.
You've left out one very important fact--we were mislead into Iraq by a president and vice president who dodged the Viet Nam War. Now they have the nerve to continue a similar
war on the backs of other people's children! Let's do the only right thing and impeach Bush AND Cheney, end this wrong
war in the wrong country and give America a chance to heal.
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Somegirl
I went to your website link. I assume this is what you are talking about:
"Somatic Experiencing® (SE) is a short-term naturalistic approach to the resolution and healing of trauma developed by Dr. Peter Levine. It is based upon the observation that wild prey animals, though threatened routinely, are rarely traumatized. Animals in the wild utilize innate mechanisms to regulate and discharge the high levels of energy arousal associated with defensive survival behaviors. These mechanisms provide animals with a built-in ‘’immunity’’ to trauma that enables them to return to normal in the aftermath of highly ‘’charged’’ life-threatening experiences."
This may have some application to benefit military personnel who have been freshly and repeatedly exposed to life threatening events and who are self-described as suffering from PTSD and who are ready to accept outside help.
Often though, in the cases of military PTSD, there is sometimes a delayed onset of symptoms that may only come years later, after the trauma has been internalized and then diffused into other symptoms such as severe depression, anger, chronic hyper-arousal stress, paranoia etc.
At first glance, I think your approach has some merit worth exploring. At least it's better than the last gimmick I saw a few months ago in the news and on Salon, where some quack psychologists want to hook returnees up to a virtual reality simulator and get them to re-live their stress-event (s) such as seeing death, killing people, getting blasted by IEDs etc.
I think what that video-game company wants to do is to get a big fat research grant and then sell their equipment to the Veterans Affairs department for the VA hospitals. That would be a cruel joke on the sufferers of PTSD and yet another bunch of scam artists trying to bilk the government.
But back to your technique and some questions that would have to be answered. A tiger in the jungle never had a closed head trauma injury from an IED blast. A tiger in the jungle almost never engages voluntarily in combat.
There are all kinds of trauma a soldier, airman or Marine faces in wartime that is nothing like situations facing animals. It's much more complex than that over-simplification.
While I think there are some ideas worth looking into, I also notice that the website is trying to sell instruction to therapists. I'll bet they would like to have a fat government contract to experiment on real veterans and returnees also. When ever I smell money involved in these things, instead of showing medical journal papers written and published, I am skeptical of the motives. The fact that this outfit is in Boulder, Colorado, home to every kind of psychotherapy quack you can name, makes me uneasy.
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Talk is cheap!
The law that I would like to see passed and that makes total sense to me is that if you support the war, any war or vote for anyone that supports the war, then you personally must serve until the war is over. It would not matter if you are a U.S. Senator or Representative, the President of the United States, male or female, among the wealthy elite, or young or old. Anyone who supports war must serve in the military. I would allow two exceptions. You can personally pay cash up front in lieu of service. The cash amount would be determined by a panel of civil litigation attorneys? Every year you choose not to make a personal sacrifice for your country, you have to pay cash in lieu of sacrifice. The second exception would be if you have served in combat with the military. Every year you have served in combat earns you a year exemption. If you still choose to serve then you receive double pay. Which brings up the last thing - everyone who serves in the military is paid the same (with the one exception just noted.) In my mind a General has no more human value than the lowest ranked enlisted person.
So, anyone willing to take a bet we will never start another war? If this law passed now, the Iraq War would come to a screeching halt with nary a word about “cut and run” or success vs. failure. We will also find out how many “good Americans” there are who are willing to sacrifice for their country. I have no respect and utter disdain for anyone who supports this war and is not serving in the military.
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Thank you
for taking the time to write this. My son has beens short-cycled twice, spending 25 of the last 38 months in Iraq. How about we form up a neocon brigade and let em head over to Baghdad and kick some ass?
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How about disabled and elderly people, Liberal American?
Would they have to go serve in Iraq too?
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OH, FOR SOME COMEUPPANCE....
I have so often lately come to the sad conclusion, that good is being triumphed over by evil, and the Rollo Tomasi's of the
neocon hordes, are never going to reap their just deserts. The fact Bush and Cheney stole their way into office, and have never been challenged about that now, by comparison, minor infraction of the Law, is at the heart of the million and one other criminal acts they and their supporters and enablers have committed since. Who would have thought, as recently as 7 years ago, that huge stories in the news about GOP/neocon attacks on our Constitution and Liberties, would one by one be pushed into the trash heap by the next, even more sensational revelation of criminal wrongdoing?? You really cannot recall all the many instances of criminal activity by these lowlifes without a program, some sort of record of shame from which to recall. It will take a much better and more robust group of representatives and judges than are presently serving, to ever
investigate and punish all of these criminals and their cohorts. I could be wrong, but I don't hold out much hope that any of these puppets or their puppeteers will ever see a court of law, and that is what ensures the end of our once great nation.