Could PTSD Really Be Post-Traumatic Soul Disorder?

U.S. soldiers on patrol in Iraq / Army photo

Fascinating piece in Miller-McCune, a new and valued journal that asks tough questions, even if it can’t always come up with the answers. In Beyond PTSD: Soldiers Have Injured Souls, writer Diane Silver peers into soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder and suggests something else may be amiss:

What sometimes happens in war may more accurately be called a moral injury — a deep soul wound that pierces a person’s identity, sense of morality and relationship to society. In short, a threat in a solder’s life.

It’s an interesting notion, one that rings at least partially true based on some of the conversations I’ve had with vets.

Related Topics: Afghanistan, Iraq, Military Mental Health, National Security, PTSD, Troops, Veterans
  • Latest on Battleland

    Air Force (left) and Getty Images (right)

    Bus Station for Afghanistan: Coming and Going…Now Going, For Good

    The Manas air base in Kyrgyzstan has been the Greyhound Bus terminal for U.S. troops flowing in and out of Afghanistan for the past decade. But that’s coming to an end in two years. Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev told Susan Elliott, the deputy assistant U.S. secretary of state for South and Central Asia, earlier this week that the “foreign military contingent should not be in Manas Civil Airport after the summer of 2014.”

    Army illustration/Mindy Campbell, Douglas DeMaio

    PTSD…And Cash

    The Army removed Colonel Dallas Homas, commander of Madigan Army Medical Center in Washington state, on Tuesday from his post because of an investigation into whether post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnoses were reversed solely to reduce medical costs on his watch.

    DoD Photo by Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo

    “Leon the Lip”

    Leon Panetta first ran afoul of a president when he was a lowly federal staffer more than 40 years ago. The president was Richard Nixon, who didn’t like the way Panetta, then a civil-rights advocate at the old Department of Health, Education and Welfare, pressed the Administration to speed up school integration. Panetta resigned, moved back to California and ran for Congress. Nixon’s own Oval Office tapes captured him describing Panetta’s resulting 1971 book on the experience, Bring Us Together, as “a case history on how to screw the White House.”

blog comments powered by Disqus