Stress Due to Wartime Trauma

While there are many types of stress, most real, some imagined but all a serious threat to mental stability, for the purpose of this essay, the focus will be on the effects of war, deprivation of a normal life-style, being wounded, or seeing friends and fellow soldiers maimed or killed. In other words, the examination of what war does to ordinary humans will be examined.

The issue of stress has received a lot of attention in recent years due to the complications faced by many returning soldiers from the war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are many cases of what is now called post-traumatic stress disorder.

"Acute stress disorder involves prominent symptoms of threat avoidance. Preliminary cross-sectional data suggest that such threat-avoidance symptoms may also manifest cognitively, as attentional threat avoidance" (Wald et al 2011, p. 699). In other words, many of returning soldiers who suffer from post- traumatic stress syndrome or disorder have problems readjusting to normal ways of thinking and are prone to avoid anything that, at least in their minds, might be considered a threat. What makes this "stress" problem a severe one is the number of returning men and women it affects. Over 1.8 million US troops have been deployed to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. "Combat is associated with considerable mental health risk, including elevated rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a psychiatric disorder characterized by intrusive and distressing reliving of traumatic events (through memories or dreams), avoidance of reminders about those events, and hyperarousal symptoms such as impaired sleep, irritability and decreased concentration" (Polusny et al 2011 p. 688). The authors state that while most combat-exposed troops will fortunately not develop PTSD the substantial minority who do will face considerable difficulties in interpersonal relationships, occupational functioning, and quality of life as well as high rates of co-morbidity with other psychiatric disorders.

It seems this stress disorder manifests itself in two areas: "Depending on the war, post - traumatic stress can have many expressions, but the Iraq war, because of its omnipresent suicide bombers and roadside explosives, seems to have disproportionately rendered its soldiers afraid of two things: driving and crowds" (Senior, 2011, para. 1).

In past wars, such stress symptoms were often referred to qs shell shock. But, the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan are different, according to Polusny et al (2011) because the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been characterized by unconventional features such as the use of improvised explosive devices by an unseen enemy. Such actions as counterinsurgency and urban warfare tend to produce combat situations for which the soldiers and even civilians may feel they are simply not prepared for. Often this may include such unexpected actions as killing a civilian. All that may significantly contribute to PTSD risk.

Of course, the army high command is acutely aware of the problem of such stress disorders, and often assists soldiers with counseling and even medication. But, there are critics who claim that some soldiers as well as veterans are taking unfair advantage of the drugs offered causing more harm than good. Here is one startling statistic: "A June 2010 internal report from the Defense Department's Pharmacoeconomic Center at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio showed that 213,972, or 20% of the 1.1 million active-duty troops surveyed, were taking some form of psychotropic drug: antidepressants, antipsychotics, sedative hypnotics or other controlled substances. The Army implicated prescription drugs as contributing to suicides in a July 2010 report, which said one-third of all active-duty military suicides involved prescription drugs" (Brown, 2011, p. 27). The article also claims that the army's central nervous system drug formulary includes highly addictive medications like Valium and Xanax, used to treat anxiety and depression. There is no doubt that unsupervised use of such medicines may cause serious mental breakdowns, including suicides.

One major concern is the fact that the majority of the American public simply does not understand the root causes of post-traumatic stress disorder. Therefore, a veteran or returning soldier often finds his mental fragility not supported by friends and family, which only causes him the sort of frustration that can produce far more serious mental as well as physical breakdowns including divorce, or in some cases restraining orders from wives who simply fear for their safety and that of the couple's children.

It is easy for the average person to insist that "stress" (as he understands it) is nothing serious and merely requires one to take a deep breath, have some patience and "get over it." These are the same people who see such anomalies in society as road rage and its physical consequences, the increasing divorce rate, physical and sexual abuse, even the shooting of students and workers in colleges and factories. Too many people simply do not understand that stress, and in particular, post-traumatic stress disorder needs attention, support and the psychological efforts to overcome, ease and even solve the root cause of the anxiety disorder. Yet, one cannot emphasize enough the toll the wars have taken on veterans: "A spokesman at Fort Drum, home to the 10th Mountain Division here in New York State, (says) that one-quarter of its 20,000 soldiers have received some type of behavioral health evaluation and/or treatment during the past year" (Senior, 2011, para.11).

Stress, even though it is still not easy to define or totally solve, continues to be a major problem the longer the U.S. troops are forced to fight in a style and with an enemy unlike anything they have trained for. This sort of stress disorder has become a national menace- a problem infecting hundreds of thousands of men, women and families.

References:

Brown, B. (2011): "Lethal dose" Washington:

Government Executive March, 2011, Vol. 43, issue 3, p. 27

Polusny, M. A., Erbes, C. J., Murdoch, M., Arbisi, P. A., et al

(2011): " Prospective risk factors for new-onset post-

traumatic stress disorder in National Guard soldiers

deployed to Iraq" Cambridge: Psychological Medicine

: Apr 2011 . Vol. 41, Iss. 4; pg. 688

Senior, J. (2011): " The Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Wellbutrin,

Celexa, Effexor, Valium, Klonopin, Ativan, Restoril, Xanax,

Adderall, Ritalin, Haldol, Risperdal, Seroquel, Ambien,

Lunesta, Elavil, Trazodone War; As it approaches its tenth year,

our nation's longest war is showing signs of waning.

Meanwhile, our soldiers are falling apart" New York Magazine

Feb 14, 2011

Wald, I., Lubin, G., Holoshitz, Y., and Muller, D., et al

(2011): " Battlefield-like stress following simulated

combat and suppression of attention bias to threat"

Cambridge: Psychological Medicine Apr 2011 . Vol. 41,

Iss. 4; pg. 699