PTSD: A disorder in which a person has difficulty recovering after experiencing or witnessing a terrifying event.
The condition may last months or years, with triggers that can bring back memories of the trauma accompanied by intense emotional and physical reactions.
Symptoms may include nightmares or unwanted memories of the trauma, avoidance of situations that bring back memories of the trauma, heightened reactions, anxiety, or depressed mood.
The Troops returning from Viet Nam suffered the consequences of witnessing firsthand, the death and destruction of weapons of war. Their trauma had been ignored. Somehow, murdering, and marauding other humans were just considered what a Troop must do in a war. Not until the Veterans of the Bush/Cheney Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan returned home, broken, shattered, and suicidal, did our government even begin to admit that PTSD was real. Of course, the men and women who had the power to send the Troops into war, seldom if ever had to shoot the weapons of mass destruction, or see the bloodied bodies of the enemy, the innocent, or their fellow Troops.
I MUST wonder, how are the survivors, the families of the victims, the friends of the victims the First Responders of death and destruction within the United States coping? Weapons of War have been too abundant in our nation. Weapons of War have been used almost as a form of Domestic Terrorism. Weapons of War have been supported by those who place the dollars of the NRA and the Gun Manufactures within our Governing Bodies.
Thank goodness, I have not lost a family member, a friend, or a coworker to WEAPONS OF WAR, permitted to be acquired and used by mainly the Republican Party. But I must wonder how, when war is waged in our classrooms, theaters, parades, marathons, neighborhoods, and concerts, HOW DO THOSE WHO LOST LOVED ONES OR FRIENDS, survive?
