TSZ Magazine: July 2016 (Issue #2)

Bonus Article: PTSD and Suicide in the Military

by Bianca (@CrazyLovelyMe)

What actually is PTSD? It's a mental disorder that makes you feel anxious, or even feel scared when it's triggered. But what actually cause it being develop? It can be develop by many various things that makes you feel traumatized; An event that is very dangerous, or scary that scar you mentally. It's not always because of something happened to you, but it also can be develop when there's a sudden, and unexpected death of a loved one.

For example, if a person witnessed a psychologically traumatic event: war, natural disaster, and anything else that invokes the feeling of helplessness, or intense fear will eventually develop Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Another example on what can triggers the development of PTSD is if this person witnesses another person death, sexual harassment, or witnessing a close-up natural disaster (Tornado, Tsunami, Eruption, and many more), and war.

Signs and Symptoms of PTSD

-Fearful thought

Constant flashback of a traumatic event

Nightmares

Depression

Worrying about something again, and again

Have the feeling of intense guilt

Less interest in a former enjoyable activities

Anger or irritability

Constantly on guard

Sleeplessness

But we are here not only to talk about PTSD in public general, but we will be much more focusing on most common victim of PTSD, which is actually the one that constantly work hard to protect the nation that we often call, soldiers. After reading all of the possible causes of PTSD, when you think about it, the most common group that live in a constant fear and have their lives threaten is soldiers. When we are talking about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, if we brought up the subject of soldiers and military it will all make sense.

Now let's imagine, you are standing there in a middle of battlefield. Mix emotions are surrounding you, with being all hyped up since you've been preparing all these time for this particular battle, yet you feel this strong feeling of scare that haunts you constantly in the battlefield. With all of this mix emotion, can you actually be that focus? You are in intense pressure right? Not only from your mental but actually from everywhere else. What about your family back home? They are waiting, and leaning on you for support. Imagine how much worry back at home. They are your loved one, it will not matter if they actually hate you or not, they are your family.

But after you get everything together, you realized that one wrong move, and there's a high chance you will lose your life. You will be considered lucky enough if you still can go back home with just losing few parts of your body. But what if the impact actually put another person's life in danger? What if you survived the impact, but because of you another brave soldier is in danger, or even died. How will their family be? Devastated of course. When you were training, you made few great friends too! Bonding over beers and talking about some random stuff or complaining about the chief, you made memories with them. Then at war, you went together with them, you accidentally put their lives in danger. Not only that, what if your friend sacrificed themselves for you? Intense guilt.

If all of that bad things happened, wouldn't you be traumatized? Yes, when in a battlefield of course it's very dangerous, and of course what I just stated can be actually happen in battlefield, with intense stress on trying to keep it all together, and the intense guilt if you found out what you did actually have a big impact. What I just stated, or explained is some of the causes that developed PTSD for soldiers. The intensity of trauma, the heartache after losing someone, being there physically when it happened, feeling that you are hopeless, that's what leads to PTSD.

What actually is the impact of PTSD with soldiers? They will be constantly in fear, always be haunted with nightmares, and with all of this anxiety, they just can't lead a normal life. People with PTSD are more likely to develop depression and likely to develop anxiety disorder. Because of this, people with PTSD are more likely to attempt suicide. There's also a very high rates of deliberate self-harm among people with PTSD. Not only that, there's much more greater risk of health problems, including, pain, diabetes, obesity, heart problems, respiratory problems, and sexual dysfunction.

But then, there's also suicide inside military. Yes, the growing rates of suicide in military is insanely high. Some have claimed that this spate of suicide is due to the stress of war. According to , 85% of military suicides have not seen a combat, and 52% never even deployed.

So what actually is causing this suicides? According to the new documentary The Hidden Enemy: Inside Psychiatry's Covert Agenda, all evidence leads on one direction only: psychiatric drug prescribing. Pull the string further and you'll find psychiatrists ever widening the definitions of what it means to be "mentally ill," especially when it comes to post traumatic stress disorder in soldiers, and PTSD in veterans. And in psychiatry, diagnoses of psychological disorders such as PTSD, personality disorder and social anxiety disorder are almost inevitably followed by the prescription of at least one psychiatric drug. So in one big word, PTSD is one of the biggest factors that leads to suicide in veterans or soldiers.

After all of the research I had done, I just couldn't get my head thinking straight. I constantly think about soldiers, especially the ones that committed suicide. If you have friends or family that actually have PTSD, don't hesitate to do more research to know what actually is happening with them. Yes, sometimes they don't want any of our help, but at least keep trying. Don't give up, and tell them that you will be there to support them.