Everyone deserves a chance to heal

Everyone deserves a chance to heal


Is PTSD Real?

November 07, 2021

Episode 37:  Is PTSD real? In the worst American battle losses, 50% of survivors on the battlefield were Behavioral Health casualties. If you won’t take it from me, read the book, The Pacific and The Forgotten War to discover the very brief mentions of the 50% BH losses in WWII and the Korean War, respectively.
 
My deployment as the 36th Infantry Division Psychiatrist and Operation Spartan Shield O-4 Consultant during the height of the biowarfare information-campaign otherwise known as COVID-19. This taught me a few things. The virus itself doesn’t have an enormous impact on the health of troops, but the NATO troop requirements is another story entirely. I went through a 14-day quarantine isolation under military guard supervision. A fence and gate guard was put around two barracks buildings and that became my home. In some environments, troops are tested every day for COVID-19, and many troops experience multiple quarantine instances. Every time you travel, anytime you have clinical symptoms, even when your roommate tests positive – all result in additional quarantines. Once I got to Kuwait, I was in an 80-man barracks bay with barely enough personal space to get dressed. I slept under the AC unit that squealed at the same frequency as a fire alarm.
It’s not the virus causing anxiety, it’s the impact on the mission and, perhaps more importantly when you get to come home to see your family. See, when your deployment is over, it’s off to another dilapidated building for two more weeks of quarantine lockdown. This is making the deployments longer.
Eighty-seven percent of PTSD in the USA comes from civilians. I did the math myself because that doesn’t support the media’s narrative. They don’t seem to want you to think you have a treatable condition! By the way, I put my books online in PDF version under the last section of The Mental Component course.
Many are losing their jobs and health insurance that special needs family members feel in a very personal way. Moral injury creeps in when you realize how much of these corporate choices are misinformed or irresponsible. That said, we’re in WWIII right now so PTSD shows no signs of getting better anytime soon.
So, is PTSD real? You betcha. This episode is coded as “M” for “Mental Component” because it seeks to inform you about some statistics of which you may not have been aware. If you would like to know more, I invite you to check out the PTSD Curriculum course. It’s also coded as “M” and is the new and improved curriculum based on the PTSD inpatient and intensive outpatient program I launched at East Texas Medical Center in Tyler, TX in 2015. The hospital is now named UT Health East but the Behavioral Health Center building hasn’t changed.