Post-Vietnam Stress Disorder

subgroup with a conditioned emotional response. MILIT. MED.

What recently named disorder is commonly referred to by the four first letters of its four-word name? IÆll give you a some clues:

It affects 100 times more Americans, and has killed ten times more Americans than AIDS.

IÆm going to tell you about a disorder which over 2-1/2 million Americans are at risk of acquiring in your lifetime; especially at risk are approximately one million individuals who, in surviving their physical involvement in a life-threatening situation which cost over 55,000 American lives, are as much as risk of killing themselves as they were of being killed at the time of their original exposure.

IÆm going to tell you about a terrible sort of social disease, a disease I know both as a victim and healer, an affliction with more than a 10% fatality rate. Once known as ôPost-Vietnam Syndromeö, it is properly termed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder ... or P.T.S.D.

My goal is to describe to you a set of behavioral characteristics which you might tuck away in some recess not too far back in your mind, right next to the place you remember how you might run across and recognize such an individual, and where you store the memory of how I convinced you of the destructiveness of this disorder as well as its remarkable responsiveness to the right treatment.

. . .
marital or career commitment is expected, one is permitted more mobility, autonomy, privacy and freedom of verbal and lifestyle expression than before. What results, should this period of metamorphic benign neglect be replaced instead by a traumatic life experience or involvement in life-threatening risk taking, exposure to inhuman acts or atrocities, the death of close friends? What if, instead of a period of self-paced adult-world exploration one is forced to adhere to a code of behavior not in accordance with oneÆs previously formed religious or political principles, and accept injury and/or physical deprivation sustained in carrying out orders to achieve ends to which one is not morally committed? How does one accept the reality of picking bits of human flesh off oneÆs flack jacket, sole visible remains of what, moments before, had been oneÆs best friend and confidante, that worse of nights out on patrol? How, in surviving such experiences, does one rationalize oneÆs altered self-image, oneÆs world-image? How likely is such an individual to respond upon reentry to the once adolescent world of his family, the educational, societal and commercial world of his birth, when he gratefully
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Some common words found in the essay are:
War II, Erik Ericson, Disorder PTSD, Red Cross, AIDS IÆm, Rage Emotional, MILIT MED, LC Post-traumatic, SB Delayed, CR Figley, vietnam veterans, stress disorders, psychiatric reasons, cr figley, * quiet guy, disordered veteran, survival guilt, involvement life-threatening, individuals surviving, traumatic stress disorder, ego identity, response milit med, times americans, milit med 1984, 1984 149 237-43,
Approximate Word count = 2182
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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