When we talk about sending troops out to fight with numbers that have lots of zeros on them, chance are that nobody is thinking about how the lives of the survivors will never be the same.
Recently, ABC News made an attempt, a praiseworthy attempt, to help people see at least a little of what the human devastation means. “PTSD” stands for “post-traumatic stress disorder,” which leaves lives devastated. People come out with devastated personal relationships, often unable to maintain marriages, unable to maintain jobs, with sometimes a high potential for violence. The devastation all too frequently progresses to suicide.
Adding to this the fact that the bureaucratic institutions do not generally encourage or even permit the most efficient means of treatment, we have a domestic mess and a domestic mortality of veterans, the very people who put their lives on the line, that is nothing short of horror.
Read more on PTSD — Often Denied, Resistant To Mainstream Treatment…
Filed under PTSD by on Dec 24th, 2009. Comment. 
I know childhood is not the idyllic thing that reminiscing parents think it is. I remember being afraid I could not open the lock to my gym locker unaided in grade seven. I remember fearing the other girls would think I was too fat or too weird. I think I worried about everything except not being smart enough. I was lucky I had that one nailed.
If I work really hard and think back farther, I can remember being afraid of the dark. I got a teddy bear and a prayer book to deal with that one.
My mother spanked me exactly once, when I plucked a flower from a neighbor’s yard. It was wrong, and she explained to me why I got spanked. She never had to spank me again, as I was a rule respecting child.
I cannot remember and can barely understand, even now with my aggressive use of energy psychology, what it is like for a child to be a victim of assault or sexual or physical abuse, or even to live in fear of such abuse. It takes all my empathy to deal with such children as adults.
Read more on The Violence Epidemic (Against Children)…
Filed under Violence by on Dec 28th, 2009. Comment.
She was a woman in her early seventies. She looked tired, almost haggard, although neatly dressed. She had obviously seen a lot of hardship in her life, but she wore it well. She looked like someone you could trust, a “salt of the earth” kind of person.
It is unusual to see a senior come to a psychiatric clinic for the first time. We see women of all ages, it is true; about 70% of the psychiatric patients in most average (not Department of Veterans Affairs) medical clinics are female.
She had been referred by a general physician who could do nothing for her headaches. He had wisely decided that starting her on any kind of potentially addictive painkiller was a very bad idea.
I took a detailed history. It seemed that the headaches came on when her husband yelled at her or threatened her. He did that often enough. He was of some kind of northern European origin. She had married him after the death of her first husband in an accident; her first husband had been her real love-match. But she was a traditional housewife, who wanted to keep house more than anything in the world.
Filed under Psychotherapy by on Dec 30th, 2009. Comment.