Advanced Essay #4 Post Trauma Griffin Gallagher

War has been used for as long as history remembers as a tool of groups to get other groups to do what they want, this means giving up resources or land, or changing social policies or even just to destroy rivals. Everyone looks at the larger group, but almost no one looks at how each individual soldier handles  war.

Many soldiers are affected by a severe mental disease, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. PTSD is caused by a person experiencing a traumatic event like a natural disaster, a terrorist attack,  sexual assault or rape, and military combat. Only 4 out of 100 (4%) civilian men and 10 out of 100 (10%) of civilian women will develop PTSD., but this number jumps to roughly 15 out of 100 (15%) regarding veterans. These statistics come from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

PTSD has no known cure, but there are ways to suppress the symptoms, such as therapy and psychiatry. I seen an image of a man from Vietnam running away from a fiery napalm blast. He could most definitely hear the last screams and cries of the enemy soldiers. He heard their last breaths. The soldier is being torn apart inside by many mixed emotions. On one hand, he must be happy because there is no longer an immediate threat to his life, but on the other hand, he feels remorse for taking away the lives of so many people. Traumatic events such as the one described in this picture can cause PTSD. Soldiers living with this mental disease are not lost though, as I have said before there are lots of treatments.

However, these treatments are not always given to the people who really need it. One case of this is a man known as Eddie Ruth. Eddie served in the marines on three tours in Iraq and suffered from extremely severe ptsd. He depended on his mom to take care of him. Each day she drove him to work in the morning, but after work Eddie had a short period of time by himself in the afternoon before his mother got home. Eddie’s mother feared and prayed to herself every day on the way home, she feared he would kill himself due to all the stress. Eddie got no treatment for his PTSD, the veterans hospital said he had no signs of the disease and therefore would not pay for the expensive and long term therapy. One day Eddie was taken out to a shooting range by a man named Chris Kyle, also known as “The American Sniper,” the most efficient sniper the U.S. Navy Seals has ever had on record with over 150 confirmed kills. Kyle and a friend were taking Routh to a shooting range to help him cope with his PTSD, but it took an unfortunate twist when they got there. Kyle and his friend Littlefield were both shot and killed in cold blood by Eddie Routh. The two men didn't even have a chance to fight back, their guns were both holstered, the safeties still engaged. This is a perfect example of how not getting the proper treatment for PTSD can be dangerous, and in some circumstances even fatal. At his trial they argued that he was insane and had severe PTSD. His mother gave this statement, “This was a 6-foot-2 Marine, A tough man calling for his mama." This was in context to the fact that some nights Routh would get so scared he would have to sleep in bed with his mother. All this could have been avoided if the Veterans hospital would've given him the proper treatment. Since the military is a very large part of this country, we need to pay as much attention to the soldiers who are home as we do to the soldiers who are on the front lines. PTSD is a large part of the military, and since the military is a large part of America, PTSD should also be a large part of the things we address on a daily basis. Eddie Routh is just one example; how many other tragedies could be prevented if we just spent a little bit more time and money on our soldiers when they come home from war? We need to stop forgetting about our Veterans.