Military Wives Can Suffer from PTSD

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Not Just for Soldiers Anymore
Like the soldiers, military wives are trained by the military. While a soldier’s wife may not go through the same physical training as her husband we do have support, support and support pounded into our heads until we know nothing else. Most are happy to be that good military wife and we support our husbands. When our soldiers are sent into combat their wives go into superwoman mode. We can do it all and hold it together on our own. We know how to take care of even the biggest disaster at home all the while making sure our husband has everything he needs and more in a combat zone. We are military wives, we are strong, we are proud and we forget that sometimes we need support as well. Most military wives do keep it together during a mobilization. While our soldier is gone there is nothing we can’t do but for some the problem begins when the threat is over. Once our soldier returns from combat and life should be getting back to normal seems to be the time many wives fall apart. The military prepares us for everything relating to our soldier and the aftermath of war for him. We are told what to look for and the sign of PTSD. They forget to tell us that we may experience some symptoms of PTSD as well. We watch for their nightmares, outbursts of anger, trouble relating with others and trouble with sleeping along with many other “red flags” yet wives are not warned that they may experience very similar symptoms after their soldier returns home. After a year of living in constant fear, jumping each time the phone rings and looking out the window, praying that the person at your door is not wearing a uniform combat, also takes a toll on the soldier’s wife. One of the causes for PTSD is “the person's response involved intense fear, helplessness or horror." That pretty well sums up the way both the soldier and the soldier’s wife live during a combat situation. So, is it so impossible to consider that even though a wife did not walk into the combat zone with her husband that she might also be combat weary? Is it possible that a soldier’s wife might also suffer from PTSD once her husband is home and safe? As wives we are not expected to suffer from PTSD nor are we expected to be anything but happy that our soldier has come home safely. When we look at it realistically, we realize that both the soldier and his wife must adjust to having someone around again, both must make changes in the way they do things. Therefore, it is entirely possible that both might also suffer from PTSD. It is time that military offers treatment for PTSD not only to the soldier but also to the soldier’s wife. Instead of marriage counseling when the problem is not actually the marriage but the fact that both are suffering from PTSD. It is time to offer individual assessments with individual counseling and then add the marriage counseling if the need still exists.
It is past time that the military realizes that the wife of a soldier also goes to war and she can also come home with PTSD.

Another Couple Dealing With PTSD

Listen to Their Story

Anna and Peter Mohan are a couple in their 20s who married just before Peter went to Iraq with the Army. When he came back, Peter was a different man — morose, withdrawn and, eventually, suicidal.

He was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). In their own words, Anna and Peter talk about how PTSD almost destroyed their marriage. Peter is getting help, but their future still feels precarious.

Story from NPR

Great Article in Time

Thursday, Jul. 03, 2008

Giving Back to Veterans

By Joe Klein

In the spring of 2007, Fred Wilpon, the owner of the New York Mets, accompanied his team on a visit to the wounded troops at Walter Reed Army Hospital. Wilpon was haunted by the experience, especially by a lieutenant who had just arrived at the hospital after being severely wounded in Iraq a week earlier. The doctors said the lieutenant would have bled to death in previous wars, but the efficacy of the battlefield medical care in Iraq and Afghanistan was remarkable. "I'd say it was a miracle that kid was still alive," Wilpon says, but then he realized he was in a hospital full of miracles. As he thought about this afterward, Wilpon figured--as others involved in the care of veterans have--that there was going to be an unprecedented need for psychological counseling for the survivors of horrific wounds. "The other thing that struck me was how removed most Americans are from the troops," Wilpon says. "Most people don't think much about the war. When I was a kid during World War II, we were always being asked to do something for the troops. I wanted to reconnect the public with the military."

Wilpon went to work, talking to military leaders about what the returning troops needed most--and to his fellow baseball owners about organizing a massive program to help out. The result, unveiled this July Fourth weekend, is an ambitious effort to raise $100 million to provide free psychological counseling for returning veterans and jobs for those who need them. The scope of the problem is enormous: upwards of 20% of combat veterans are coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). As recently reported in TIME, the military is prescribing antidepressants to troops downrange to help blunt the psychological effects of combat. "There's just a tremendous need for counseling," says Paul Rieckhoff of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. "The [Department of Veterans Affairs'] psychological-counseling program is overwhelmed. The suicide rates for returning vets are just off the charts. If Major League Baseball can get this program up to scale, we could save thousands of lives."

Psychological counseling is a sensitive subject in the macho world of the military. "There's tremendous stigma attached," says retired general David Grange, president of the McCormick Foundation, which will administer the program for Major League Baseball. "In my day, you'd never ask for psychological help because you'd be disqualified for command." To eliminate the stigma, a few regular Army units have started to make psychological counseling mandatory for soldiers returning from combat. "We decided to do it after those murders at Fort Bragg," said retired general B.B. Bell, who initiated mandatory counseling when he commanded the U.S. Army in Europe. (Bell was referring to the three returning soldiers who murdered their wives in 2002.) There is a similar program at Fort Lewis, Wash. According to Dr. Charles Hoge in the New England Journal of Medicine, such programs can significantly reduce the number of soldiers reluctant to go for counseling.

But those are isolated programs. And the need is even greater in the National Guard and Reserves. Because of the all-volunteer Army, "we've never had so many Guard and Reserves involved in combat," Grange says. These troops tend to be less well trained and yanked out of settled civilian lives and therefore more susceptible to psychological stress. "They also come home totally removed from the base of support that regular troops have. They're all alone," he says. Indeed, a disproportionate number of Guard and Reserve service members have civilian jobs as first responders--police, firefighters, emergency workers--and they can be removed from their posts, sent to desk jobs or medical leave, if they seek psychological counseling for PTSD. "A lot of these people come home and find that their jobs are no longer there," says Grange, explaining why Major League Baseball included a jobs component in its program. "Ideally, if this thing works, we'll be able to link up a returning veteran with a job and counseling--and prospective employers can be reassured that the veteran isn't going to go postal on them."

With Veterans Affairs overwhelmed by two wars, it may be a good thing, spiritually, for the rest of us to help those who have sacrificed so much in Iraq and Afghanistan. A few years ago, a colonel who had just returned from combat told me, "Over there, it always felt like we're stuck in hell and the country is at the mall." Part of the responsibility for the disconnect lies with President George W. Bush, who never asked us to sacrifice for the war effort. It's time to rectify that. "I'd like to see every kid in America give part of their allowance to help the troops," Wilpon says. As an elderly kid, I'm giving part of mine. If you want to help, please visit welcomebackveterans.org

Triggers

It can be difficult supporting someone with an addiction. They can often deflect their issues on you or when they have a bad day it affects you. You never know what will trigger their PTSD issues. I had a break through when he got up set. I had two choices. Get angry that he was upset and how dumb his was making the situation or tell him that I love him and point out what was happening.

I told him I loved him and hoped that would be enough. I have to always keep reminding myself that the only person I can control is me. How I react and how I deal with anyone is within my control.

This new medication my husband is on is giving him headaches. He has a choice take the medication and control his depression, anxiety and PTSD and have horrible headaches that make him hurt and tired or not take his meds and no headache but deal with everything else.

I know medication has side effects. It is hard to watch someone you love work through everything. So because of the headaches he didn't take his meds. Therefore, something small with me turned into something major because he wasn't on his medication. However, I didn't know that at the time.

I am VERY glad I choose to tell him I loved him and not get upset. That's a great step for me!

VA Appointments

Every time my husband has a VA appointment, I anxiously wait. It is like waiting for test results when you fear a horrible disease or bad news. I don't know what I think is going to happen in those appointments. I don't fear them, it's just the anticipation of new discovery, breakthroughs or ahas.

Today, my husband called to tell me his appointment went well. Went well - hmmm what does that mean. When your husband says it went well, to him that is very descriptive and explains how the session went. For me, I want to know more. I know Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.

In any case, this entire experience has taught me a lot. Some lessons I wish I hadn't learned. I do believe we find strength when we least expect it. I know everyone says that. But it is true and I think we need to be reminded of it... often.

Back in March I heard an incredible speaker named Craig Berthold from the Bountiful Health Center in Utah. He provided a FANTASTIC handout any couple can use to better communicate.

Check it out 4stepstofreedom.pdf

Land Mine #2 - Facing the Unseen Wound

In an article and study by the RAND Corp on April 17, 2007, 300K troops returning
home have PTSD.

"...Defense Department numbers are probably too low. She says DOD figures show 93 percent of the Army and 97 percent of the Marines are exposed to small arms fire, mortar attack, or roadside bombs. But she says the incidents of PTSD or minor traumatic brain injury could be higher than the department thinks, based on those statistics."

Having Jay diagnosed with PTSD was the unseen land mine, the one that even if you tried to prepare and anticipated, you still couldn't. This was big one in the field of our marriage and family just waiting .. like a ticketing time bomb. It went off without warning.

Because I had been enabling Jay and we both were in denial, discovering he had PTSD rocked our marriage to the core.

I had to even admit this, but part of me wondered if it wasn't an excuse for him. Because I wasn't with him on deployment it was hard to imagine what it might have been like for him. All of the pictures I saw where smiling happy service members. It looked more like a vacation than war. Plus, I knew my husband had spent his whole life training for this event so I figured he was loving every minute of it.

Here's where we made the biggest mistake of all and why this was the biggest land mine ever! While he was diagnosed with PTSD and the VA prescribed medication.

He didn't continue treatment.

He thought he could tackle it.....

Still a Long Way From Home Story

Still a Long Way from Home -

Above is the link to the story. What hit me was the opening paragraph.

"Nearly 40,000 U.S. troops [have been] diagnosed by the military with post-traumatic stress disorder after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2003 to 2007; the number of diagnoses increased nearly 50 percent in 2007 over the previous year, the military said this spring. ... What the raw numbers on war trauma can't show are what I see every day in my office: the individual stories of men and women who have sustained emotional trauma as well as physical injury, people who are still fighting an arduous postwar battle to heal, to understand a mysterious psychological condition and re-enter civilian life"

The real problem are the thousands who HAVEN'T been diagnosed. My husband was diagnosed in 2006, two years later from when he should of seen someone.

For tough service members like my husband, who is in special forces, admitting weakness is not an option. Fear of being labeled or losing your position in the military you love is also a huge concern. This fear of weakness prohibits good men and women from getting the help they need to function in live and with their families.

For the spouses, family members and friends, seeing someone you love and care about so much slow destroy themselves is difficult. PTSD in our service members is manifesting itself in so many different ways it can be hard to pin point it.

With Jay, his PTSD became addiction and wall he started to build around himself.