Problems

Yes, I had heard at some point or another that veterans suffer from mental problems after they come back. It seems completely logical being that they are put in an environment that nobody is used to. Think about it, the panorama is filled with violence, sharp noises, loudness and gore up to a point that it forces itself into your mind in spite of you trying to block it. Of course you’re going to have trauma!

I hadn’t thought much of it until I read Slaughterhouse- Five. Let me rephrase that. I had thought of it being a very serious matter but hadn’t completely thought about how hard it must be to express something like this until is Mr. Tangen enlightened us in class. How Billy only starts traveling throughout time when something death- related or traumatic happens in his life. It’s like when an old man is telling you a story and because he can’t handle the grief that that specific memory entails that he jumps you to another one. Unfortunately that’s not what happens to most veterans; they come home with memories that will stay in their mind forever. “What is seen cannot be un-seen”- Andrew Bravener. It sounds obvious but it’s actually not because we aren’t that picky about what we watch.

The soldiers have no choice. We hadn’t thought of it to be a mental condition and didn’t name it until 1985. “Post-traumatic stress disorder is a debilitating condition that often follows a terrifying physical or emotional event. It causes the person who survived the event to have persistent, frightening thoughts and memories, or flashbacks, of the ordeal. Symptoms include emotional numbing, sleep problems, irritability, hyper vigilance, depression, anxiety and poor concentration.” (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0301-06.htm)

So if this happens to all “war members” (even our guys) then why do we keep on torturing them by sending them off to combat? It’s not like this is an international secret because we have seen this condition present in some TV shows such as Grey’s Anatomy. Maybe it’s that we have one too many problems and one more just adds to the list. I say, FIND A NEW WAY TO SOLVE YOUR PROBLEMS.