30 percent US soldiers develop mental disorders after Iraq mission

Xinhua - China ^ | 2005-07-29

[joesnuffy]

If you have ever had your friends brains blown out in front of you..or tried to comfort them as they lay dying...

Or had to treat a house full of severely wounded women and kids after it had to be taken out due to enemy fire..

And if you had to see and smell and hear these things for several months day after day...and you are only 19 yrs old..

And you don't come back with some kind of adjustment problems

You aint human...

It is the nature of the beast...and the curse on those who defend us with their lives their limbs and often their sanity

God Bless and keep them..and heal all their wounds..
those of the body and those of the soul

imo

[vbmoneyspender]

I thought liberals consider 100% of conservatives to have mental problems.

[F14 Pilot]

may be!

[DoughtyOne]

Anyone who has someone else telling them what to do 24/7/365, is going to have a bit of a problem when they are on their own. Add to that the stress of the potential to come under fire, and the real thing from time to time, and it's got to mess with your mind when you come home.

I'd prefer to address this as decompression also. That's not an attempt to lessen the nature of what our troops go through, or what price they pay. What it is, is a refusal to play into the media's attempts to portray our troops as if mentally ill.

The old stereotype lofted about the Vietnam vet comes to mind. These troops may have some problematic adjustments when returning to the U.S. That is a normal human reaction, or process. I don't buy the mentally ill portion of this on a large scale.

[NY Attitude]

I am sure that the adjustment of returning home to and settling into some semblance of normalcy and hoping that things are somewhat the same as when you left. The stress that may be faced are loss of family, job or the quality of life that was enjoyed prior to departure.

What I do not believe that is that the returnees are ready to be spit upon and called baby killers just like the returning Viet Nam vets had suffered.

What is unfortunate is that you cannot retaliate against these type of people without getting into serious trouble. It is a sad state of affairs.

[megatherium]

Angela Landsbury: Raymond, would you like to play cards?

[NonValueAdded]

The symptoms include anxiety, depression, nightmares, anger and an inability to concentrate.

Easily explainable after 3 month stateside exposed to the poison of the democRATs and their partners in treason, the MSM.

[MikefromOhio]

homosexuality isn't a mental disorder. It's a choice someone made.

And we should classify it as such.

[Gator101]

I am no expert but I wonder if the standard for "mental disorder" is now quite low thanks to all the shrinks wanting to keep themselves in a job. I would expect that there is naturally going to be some period of readjustment after a long stressful tour.

When I came back from the first Gulf War my mom was a little worried about me...thought I was "distant". Now I am sure I didn't endure the same level of stress our soldiers are enduring now (which comes with guerrilla warfare) but I just needed a little time to process what I, a 19 year old kid, had gone through and get used the world again. Many of my buddies were the same way. It was hard to identify with outsiders who hadn't lived the same life as you had the last 6 months so we probably did appear "distant" to others. I wasn't crazy or about to shoot up the grocery store. I just needed to decompress.

I wonder what some shrink would have said about me if I had been tested a couple months after I got back? Probably put me on 10 different drugs and convince me I was bat-**** crazy. I was fine after a couple months had passed.

[beaver fever]

"Frankly, I would think these would be normal, rational, decompressing reactions from folks who've fought to defend our nation, only to see our nation (IE - the media and the cRATS) demeaning them and their service!"

The term mental disorder covers a wide spectrum of mental health issues, everything from mild depression to sever anxiety.

I recall reading that as much as thirty percent of the general population suffers from mental disorder of one form or another.

So the chance of a soldier having a mental disorder is no greater than a clerk at the 711, maybe even less of a chance.

[SwinneySwitch]

Bravo Sierra!

[MikefromOhio]

I tell you guys about my experience. It still goes on to this day (I Have been home since January), I will wake up at night wondering if I just heard something. I still have dreams.

And I was just a REMF there in Iraq. I was NOT on patrols. I did not face any combat. I can't imagine.

Every war has had people come apart in it. But of course the MSM is playing this angle up to hurt President Bush and by extension the MILITARY itself.

[mystery-ak]

I think all of these symptoms are to be expected with returning troops from a war zone. My hubby experienced some anxiety and a little short temperness upon his return...but nothing I would say is a mental disorder....when you are shot at, mortared and see death and destruction on a daily basis and then return home to the calm and peacefulness, it's a little hard to resume to normal....but everything is back to normal....but some may have a harder time than others..

[The Phantom FReeper]

This is highly suspect to me. Out of all the men in my husband's company, I don't know any who came home from either of the company's two deployments to Iraq maladjusted. And my husband has never mentioned any of his soldiers needing psychiatric treatment following deployment.

I suspect that the psychological surveys being used to diagnose these "disorders" are being interpreted very liberally.

[Zacs Mom]

Our schools are financially rewarded for each kid they have who is on medication for these created "disorders" ~ that is why they push so hard to have every kid on Ridalyn (sp?) or some such mood altering drug! It's a crisis and no one really seems to be addressing it.

It takes a village alright ~ it takes a village to arbitrarily label a child 'disabled' and to destroy him with drugs.

[DoughtyOne]

That would be my take, but then I do not come into contact with our troops upon return.

My concern here is not to play into a scenario that sees our retruning men presented with a problem gaining employment, or even acceptance by society.

Thanks for your report.

[Publius6961]

Is this a new development? Never happened before?

Well, let's look at the bright side: 100% of the mass murderers come out either unchanged or unassembled.
Either way they are no crazier than when they went in...

No saner, either.

[CheneyChick]

I don't come into contact with our returning troops, but this sounds far fetched.

I do, and it is.

[DoughtyOne]

Thanks. This is one myth I'd like to see pounded into the sand.

The left knows it won't get away with spitting on our troops like it did last time. Instead I think they'll do their little dirty work on the sly. If they can float the premise that our troops are mentally ill, they'll have achieved a very contempable goal.

[Paige]

These numbers are rather high. Is this considered one type of mental disorder or are these every possible mental disorder from a tick to schizophrenia? As a researcher this does not read correctly to me.