Soldiers and PTSD

There are those who would have you believe that all mental illness has a biological cause. When you bring up post-traumatic stress disorder they tend to mutter and then say really stuipd things like, "Stress causes physical changes in the brain." Yeah, right.

We have a crisis coming up - it is the soldiers returning from the Iraq War with scarred souls and broken hearts. There are many who will want to give them pills and make them go away, but we know that pills aren't enough. They need to be as honored with actions as they are with words.

The VA has already announced that it is not ready to deal with the soldiers - all 100,000 that will need help according to one Pentagon estimate. Of course, helping them now will prevent other problems like unemployment and homelessness.

To their credit, the military fully acknowledges PTSD and the devestating effect it can have. It's an excellent improvement from the times when they denied it existed. But how to convince soldiers that it's not shameful or weak to need support - to need to be helped? We must believe it ourselves.