There were, as expected, a number of strong responses after I posted this on PACOVILLA Corrections blog. Two stood out above the others and I am posting them herewith.
Greg ‘Gadfly’ Doyle:
That was an outstanding question!
While I know that not every citizen who has donned a military uniform in wars past believed in God, there existed a distinct difference in mental attitudes in military combatants from the Revolutionary War until Viet Nam. Our cause was just in the minds of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines. And that justness generally had God at the center of that thinking. It was, as I have read, the motto of “for God and country.” And, for the most part, our God-fearing populace supported our military personnel in harm’s way. The turbulent 60′s and the Viet Nam war changed the American mindset, in my opinion, for the worse.
With the advent of professional psychology, which continues to assert that it knows more than theologians (and God) about human behavior, public perceptions have gradually shifted away from traditions and religious teachings, which in the past helped folks cope with disaster, disease, disappointment, and death. Psychology offers therapy, medication, and group sessions as its main course of treatment. Faith offers prayer-apy, meditation, and confession as its mainstays of treatment. God offers a higher power with a gracious helping hand, psychology can only mentor self-help.
Scripture is filled with stories about human beings, the horrors of war, and survival after wars’ retreat. War is nothing new to the human condition. But now that God has been deemed irrelevant in so many segments of our society, there is nothing to hope for beyond death for nonbelievers. And when they experienced the horrors of war firsthand, or some other shocking disruption in life, there is no way to wrap one’s mind around it—especially if one has no faith, no God, and no hope of surviving except by an Evolutionary process—to keep one from losing one’s mind on or off the battlefield. Psychology is more than happy to assert a new syndrome, condition, or disorder, which translates into more patients for the growing mental health industry.
Whatever one wishes to call shell-shock, or combat fatigue, or PTSD, how one ultimately copes with such overwhelming adversity probably is encapsulated in what my grandma referred to as “good character.” Good character was built upon faith in God in her day; but that day has since passed away for the younger generations. What are our children building upon now that will build sufficient and lasting character in them, when adversity comes? Who knows?
If psychology only knows…. we are in for a greater shock than PTSD, I’m afraid.
‘Blessed Cheesemaker’:
I think people are mixing up a couple of different concepts…and understandably so, there is a lot of psycho-f**-b*llsh*t (as my hero Sam Kinison used to say) spouted off by a bunch of people.
I’ve been in the military, worked in the VA, worked at a prison, and now am working in our state hospital system. These are my observations:
PTSD as a diagnosis has an interesting history. There was a lot of disagreement about it originally; one of the proponents who headed up a task forces worked with burn victims, and recognized what he saw in some of his patients resembled what some veterans were complaining about.
Regarding combat PTSD, what I have seen is:
__a) Combat PTSD exists–but only affected a small number of all the veterans in any given war.
__b) some people are more susceptible than others, and current research is focusing on who is more vulnerable.
__c) most of the veterans I worked with who had PTSD tried desperately to go back to normal life after the war, and did not want to think anything was wrong. They didn’t want a handout, they just wanted to not wake up in the middle of the night screaming, with nightmares, disturbing their partners sleep, or whatever.
Regarding our prison system:
__a) the hard-core criminal offenders typically were criminals as juveniles. We have a weird system where the public and our courts equate “acting violently” with “being mentally ill.” Why? I have no idea. (I’m tempted to say “that is crazy!”)
__b) when the criminal kids are juveniles, all sorts of resources are thrown (i.e., wasted) on them, especially mental health workers. The criminal juveniles automatically get mental health diagnoses, and quickly learn how to manipulate the system and the mental health workers, to everybody’s disadvantage (except their own).
Regarding miscellaneous:
__There is research that shows that children who are abused physically or sexually, and rape victims, can go on to develop PTSD. However, the vast majority of these victims do *not* perpetrate any crimes against others. Realy, PTSD should not be a defense for criminal behavior, except in the most extenuating circumstances.
One more thing, a large number of inmates really have a personality disorder, and are malingering serious mental illness symptoms, to see if they can get out of any 115′s [Inmate disciplinary violation reports], or to get meds. When I was working in CDC (without the “R”) we were told (because of Coleman) we could not diagnose Malingering, which really hampered our ability to accurately “call it like we see it.”
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