Political action and public engagement appeals to so many Vietnam (and now Afghanistan and Iraq) veterans because it helps them come to terms with their wartime experiences. With their activism, they dip back into the current of life, serving as witnesses to the painful tide of war, while attempting to find personal salvation and release.
With Friday’s news that a Department of Defense task force is recommending that additional funding be provided to the mental health of our active-duty soldiers and returning veterans, it is hard not to credit our own Daily Kos member ilona with a smidgen of credit for keeping progressive activists’ attention focused on one of the most overlooked aspects of the current Iraq conflict.
Her consistent calls for political action and her creation of the collaborative ePluribus Media PTSD Timeline have served as an inspirational model for dedicated citizen expertise. And now her time has arrived to move into a new medium with the publication of her book, Moving a Nation to Care.
Meagher’s slim but powerful volume brings together the many strands of information about PTSD she has tirelessly pursued for the past several years in a comprehensive and readable fashion. Opening with the gripping story of the famed "Marlboro Man" whose picture was blasted around the world during the battle in Fallujah—weary, tough and dirty—who came home suffering from PTSD, she moves on to delineate the fascinating history of soldiers suffering from what has been documented for thousands of years under varying names ("nostalgia," "combat fatigue," "shell shock"). She traces the history of diagnosis and treatment from Roman times to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, tracking the varied explanations, treatments and stigmas associated with the disorder.
Throughout the book, as she moves on to describing such aspects as clinical diagnosis and what exactly is happening in the brain as it deals with the aftermath of serving in a war zone, she weaves the personal stories of the men and women currently suffering from PTSD, as well as the accounts of the survivors of those soldiers who have taken their lives in response to the unrecognized and usually untreated disorder. The long-term, life-changing fallout from PTSD are explored in detail.
With every trigger and re-experience, depressive emotional and biological patterns or habits are set down. Modern psychology calls these patterns neural grooves. Eventually, people coping with PTSD being "organizing their lives around the trauma." Their work, their family relationships and their long-term health usually suffer as a result.
The current occupation in Iraq has created a larger class of PTSD sufferers than in previous conflicts for a variety of reasons. Some have to do with the nature of the so-called battlefield and the inability to distinguish friend from foe. A large number can be attributed, Meagher claims, to the fact that there is an inability in Iraq to have "safe" havens for personnel such as convoy drivers. Everyone serving is a target in this amorphous occupation, and everyone is a potential PTSD sufferer, a situation unique to this particular war. This also means that nearly every service member, no matter how mundane the position or description of duties, must be on high alert—and may have to resort to killing. This fact has had enormous consequences:
This increased exposure to killing translates into a higher level of post combat trauma. [A study showed] ....the effect of killing on Vietnam veterans, and found that soldiers who had killed in combat—or believed they had—suffer higher rates of PTSD.
Combined with the stigma of reporting mental health problems, the cursory self-reporting upon return to the United States—undertaken right when soldiers return home and face the prospect of being held on stateside bases for extra time for evaluation before returning to their families—the Veterans Administration has been struggling with underfunding to create something of an epidemic that’s running beneath the radar of public knowledge. The lack of VA staff and facilities, the shame returning vets often feel and the lack of a central record-keeping base are multiplying the problem, one that will haunt America long after the Iraq invasion is over.
Testimony to the long-reaching affects of PTSD are evidenced by the unanticipated uptick in Vietnam vets reporting to the VA that images and news about the current conflict are triggering new cases of the disorder in previously undiagnosed vets from the previous war. And while the traditional military services at least have nascent programs to help their members and their families cope with the aftereffects of serving in a war zone, the National Guard does not—and National Guard members in this war already suffer from being less well-trained and less supported even as they bear a larger brunt of frontline experience than in any other American conflict in history.
One of the most thought-provoking sections of the book considers how the speed of modern transport from battlefield to home has put extra pressure on those returning to adjust more quickly to the jolting transition to domestic life than ever before in history.
Plodding along by horse or train or ship meant that, instead of being thrown back into society without a chance to decompress and process their wartime experiences, soldiers could spend time dealing with what they had experienced in a safe and quarantined environment.
But the development of air travel has short-circuited this important element of the healing process .... This has had a negative effect on the combat soldier, as they no longer have the necessary time to transition from life on the battlefield to life at home.
Moving a Nation to Care is a serious, reverent look at a difficult and nationally ignored problem. As lawmakers and VA staff struggle to deal with the life and death traumas of war on sufferers and family alike, it would be easy for citizens to feel powerless in a situation over which they perceive themselves as having little control. Meagher has spotted this possible paralysis and offered a wealth of contact information for organizations formed to help citizen activists find ways they can contribute to solving the problem. And despite the starkly depressing nature of the subject and the formidable challenge it presents, she has also offered up signs of hope (as in the blockquote that opens this review) and in the following instance:
If there is one slim silver lining, however, it is that the struggles of Vietnam veterans are informing the way we deal with our current veterans. By sharing their hard-wrought experience, Vietnam veterans are helping to validate and confirm the feelings felt by today’s returning troops.
Battle-scarred warriors reaching across generations to help fellow soldiers while healing themselves as well is a wonderful model for focused activism for all of us. Meagher deserves kudos of the highest order for providing insight into the PTSD experience and listing the tools for citizens to help. As a resource for anyone concerned with veterans or mental health issues in general, Moving a Nation to Care is unequalled in its simplicity and scope.
Meagher is currently on a book tour with her new work. Her schedule can be found at the Ig Publishing website. If we want to support the building of a true progressive infrastructure with a forum for new voices and subjects, I can think of no better place to start that with one of our own premier diarists, an independent publisher, a few book purchases and a visit to the author while on tour.
