Word: ptsd
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...thoughtful, good-humored man with a quick, catlike energy. After years on the clandestine side of combat, the idea of sharing secrets - especially those of a personal nature - doesn't come easily to him. But as agonizing as it is to relive the experiences of his ongoing bout with PTSD, he and Marshéle agreed to talk to TIME in an effort to sound the alarm for what has become a broader problem: the vast number of men and women returning from punishing stretches in Iraq and Afghanistan bearing the psychological scars of war. "By speaking out," says Waddell...
...PTSD wasn't recognized as an illness until the 1980s, but it has been around for as long as men have been killing one another. Its symptoms include the abuse of alcohol and other drugs, an overall emotional numbness punctuated by outbursts of rage, severe depression and recurring nightmares. In extreme cases, it can lead to suicide or murder. One military doctor described PTSD's symptoms as "going from zero to combat speed in nothing flat...
...incidence of PTSD is on the rise as two wars drag on. In April, a Rand Corp. study concluded that 1 out of almost every 5 military service members on combat tours - about 300,000 so far - returns home with symptoms of PTSD or major depression. "Anyone who goes through multiple deployments is going to be affected," says Dr. Matthew Friedman, director of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' National Center for PTSD. But nearly half of these cases, according to the Rand study, go untreated because of the stigma that the military and civil society attach to mental disorders...
...soldier was shot five times by drinking buddies from his battalion; another was robbed of $20 by a fellow soldier and then shot point-blank. During the trials of these infantrymen, their lawyers claimed that prior to carrying out the crimes, they had all displayed classic symptoms of PTSD during and after their combat tours in Iraq. Other soldiers fall into a spiral of depression and kill themselves - so many, in fact, that idyllic Colorado Springs has one of the highest suicide rates in the country. (Army figures show that 76% of soldiers who committed suicide this year had served...
Waddell became an expert at hiding his PTSD symptoms from his fellow SEALs. Despite his wife's constant pleas for him to seek help, Waddell's standard reply was, "I don't have a problem. You do." It took a full six months after the SEALs' disaster in Afghanistan before Waddell admitted to Marshéle that he was hurting. "Training inoculates you against trauma. The first time you see someone dead, it's a shock. By the 10th time, you're walking over dead bodies and making sick jokes about what they had for breakfast. But all that stress...