Spin?

Today’s Early Bird edition of Military News states that Americans think more than half the military vets are suffering from some sort of mental disorder.

Without a doubt war marks an individual. We, myself included, aren’t the first veterans to return home after serving. My great great grandfather served in the War of 1812. My great-grandfather served in the Civil War. Though I never met either of them, the stories handed down make me think they were rather normal.

We aren’t hearing the back half of this  story. What about the front half? Who is to say that some of today’s veterans weren’t harboring some sort of mental disorder before they served?

4 thoughts on “Spin?”

  2. Or it just could be that we are raising them wrong. Today we think of 18 as too young, but then, they were men at 10. I know people whose great grandparents were married at 11 and 12. Mine was 18 and 16 after he came back from the civil war. They lived harder than we do. Our kids sit in front of a tv or on a computer, they worked farms and were apprenticing for careers at the same age as our middle schoolers. Think about how many of them watched family members suffer and die because they didn’t have the medical capabilities like we have now. I say, it is because of the difference in generations lives. They didn’t have atomic bombs either or AK 47s. I know many WWII vets who came home shell shocked which today we call PTSD. I think we need to teach coping skills. We need something to help prepare everyone for death. I know PTSD is considered a mental illness but really it is trauma that someone doesn’t know how to handle. I know of civil war vets that were shell shocked as well. Maybe it was just different battles. Maybe some aren’t as bad as others. Look at all the Nam vets. So many are angry and with good reason and others are disabled some without limbs, some with Agent Orange, some with PTSD because they didn’t know when the Viet Cong were going to come out of the trees. Just my way of looking at it.

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  3. Scott says:

    You have some interesting points. When I was in air force tech school one of the sergeants in my chow hall was shell shocked from Korea. All he was allowed to do was make coffee and toss salad.

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