PTSD and Pernicious, Pusillanimous Prejudice Propaganda

One doctor with heavy influence seems to think PTSD Victims get over it “in a few years”. I just read of a U.S. Ranger, at Point du Hoc on D-Day in 1944, who STILL HAS PTSD.

(MOLALLA, Ore.) - Many of my readers know that I research my articles either/or in Merck Manual or my computer. I’m obsessive-compulsive about it. I recently posted PTSD & THE VA GOON COPS illegally spying on the PTSD Victim Veterans on salem-news.com July 14, 2009. The subject from website headlines were:

The reference for this article is Dr. Sally Satel of the American Enterprise Institute who pretends she knows “something” about PTSD, Veterans and successful medical treatment. She is misinformed and/or wrong on all counts and I will relay to the reader where she is wrong.

Her original sortie into the ignorance of PTSD Veterans was to a Congressional Committee hearing March 11, 2004. She does say at the start that PTSD “is a real and painful condition”.

With maybe 400,000 or more vets in this condition. She is correct. She doesn’t give the figures for Vietnam but she says 15% of Vets were in combat units. Actually less than one in ten were Combat Infantry.

As a former Combat Infantryman, anybody who was in the “front lines” probably has some degree of PTSD. Which is on a scale of 1 to 10 (one being slight, ten being severe “basket case”).

She quotes NVVRS (National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study) which stated that 31% of soldiers sent to Vietnam, over 1,000,000, “succumbed” to PTSD after their return.

She decries these figures but all of Vietnam was a combat zone and further that many were sent to field hospitals for “substance abuse” and behavioral problems unrelated to battle.

It is known that Infantry soldiers were given medicine which usually had intolerable adverse effects and they found cannabis was much better. They were probably drinking a lot of “hooch” on their “off” hours.

She doesn’t seem to know the difference between immediate acute battle terrors and PTSD. The P stands for POST or after. In WWII Bomber crews were given beaucoup booze to drink immediately after bombing missions – IT HELPED!!

She seems to think PTSD Victims get over it “in a few years”. I just read of a U.S. Ranger, at Point du Hoc on D-Day in 1944, who STILL HAS PTSD. I do myself and my experience was nothing like the Rangers who had extremely excessive casualties.

She says PTSD symptoms develop within a few days and in 2/3 of the sufferers fade within a year. She compares this to the Federal Building bombing in Oklahoma City. This was a one-time affair and has nothing to do with perpetual daily terror stress of combat. Low level or short time stress has no comparison to constant repeated combat stress.

Another factor she doesn’t consider is that PTSD is rarely DEPRESSION. It is somewhere between ANGUISH, the futility of it all, extreme FEAR and DISGUST. Why am I not being given the support, food, water, cigarettes, ammunition, etc, etc, etc?? Besides that “my LUCK is running out”.

Well even the VA says their medical treatment is a failure and many PTSD Vets become alcoholics and die or find any kind of drug they can get their hands on to kill the demons in their heads.

Another factor neither she nor the VA seems to know is that PTSD is based on FRIGHTFUL MEMORIES mixed in with PLEASANT MEMORIES.

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Anonymous July 20, 2009 4:57 pm (Pacific time)

the far right.. it is time to use your search engine and get off the handful of websites that sooth your beliefs.. Any learned person knows the far right is yucky, but in my opinion, everything seems to be far these days. What ever happened to the truth? obama just hired another goldman sachs CEO into the state government?? dear lord.

Henry Ruark July 18, 2009 3:28 pm (Pacific time)

To all: For your convenience here's "see with own eyes" pgh from Wikipedia description of AEI. Read these names and then "evaluate with own mind." Re founding date of '43, it remains factual that effort for establishment was part of the billionaire funding stated earlier...takes some time to set up any such workable "brain factory".

Henry Ruark July 18, 2009 11:44 am (Pacific time)

To all: The Far Right is relentless in setting out any kind of myth or appearance of information that will in any way damage or denigrate their opposition, which they see as anything more liberal than Genghis Khan. The American Enterprise Institute is one of those set up for these purposes by a small group of billionaire famiies long ago, originally to attack and if possible remove FDR as opposition to the New Deal. See my comment(s) under the Cronkite-death story for a similar operation underway rapidly for some of the same reasons, and perhaps by some of the same participants.

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