PTSD, PTSD, PTSD: Tragedy, Tragedy, Tragedy

Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, Chad Littlefield and Marine Eddy Routh.

Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, Chad Littlefield and Marine Eddy Routh.

(PORTLAND, OR) - The latest PTSD killing of the Navy SEAL who was an outstanding sniper in Iraq, prompts this article. This is the worst PTSD story I think I have ever read, despite the massacre by Sergeant Bayles in Afghanistan in 2011, who blew away 16 or so civilians. Navy SEAL Kyle's job as a sniper is outstanding and somewhat surprisingly, he said he did not regret any of his kills. As a physician for PTSD veterans I am surprised at this. Of course his victims were hundreds of yards away and the military instills in its fighters the idea of considering the targets as silhouettes, not really people. He probably never saw any of his victims afterward. Kyle even said "I'm not over there looking at these people as people". That's about the only way a sniper can reconcile his actions. For close combat, killing, wounding and dying take on a different perspective. For combat veterans who have killed in close combat, it is a different story. Most can not talk about it. It causes PTSD.

Eddie Routh, the Marine who killed Kyle and Littlefield, was four years in the Marines and certainly was a combat veteran, and surely a PTSD victim. There have been enough stories about military PTSD that anyone who is interested should know that PTSD victims frequently have a psychological short fuse called hypervigilance and a hair trigger, physically and psychologically. It is usually life-saving in combat.

It is noble that Navy SEAL Kyle tried to help Routh, but if Kyle told him that he was going to help the Marine "Get over it", that was the wrong thing to say to a severe PTSD victim. They will have PTSD the rest of their lives and it will get worse long before it gets better. Kyle said about his combat experience, "The American public lives in a dream world, you have no idea what goes on, on the other side of the world. The harsh realities that these people are doing to themselves, such as suicide bombers, and to our guys, we have to take care of them".

This story from CNN indicates that it had over 23,000 hits or comments, many other media stories had hundreds more.

The story of Marine Eddie Routh is bound to come out sometime. He has obviously a very troubled mind just like about 300,000 of our troops who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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