Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 9. Juli 2004 / Time Line July 9, 2004
Version 3.007/09/2004
One in six US veterans of Iraq war suffers trauma
disorders
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jul2004/post-j09.shtml
By Joanne Laurier
Nearly a thousand US soldiers have died in the predatory wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan. Thousands more have been maimed. For those
who escape physical injury, however, there is the mental stress
caused by combat and the specific stress of fighting in
colonial-style wars against hostile populations.
According to researchers, large numbers of American soldiers
returning from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan show signs of
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other psychiatric
difficulties. The average age of the fighting personnel is just 19,
but the prognosis for a healthy life is bleak.
A study published July 1 by the New England Journal of Medicine
(NEJM) found that one in six soldiers returning from Iraq was
suffering from a variety of emotional problems, with lower levels
of mental disabilities exhibited among those who served in
Afghanistan. The report, conducted by a team from the Walter Reed
Army Institute of Research in Washington, D.C., is the first such
assessment of war-related psychiatric disorders made while military
action is underway. Most studies in the past that have focused on
the effects of combat on mental health were performed years after
the fighting had ended.
“Research conducted after other military conflicts has shown
that deployment stressors and exposure to combat result in
considerable risks of mental health problems, including
post-traumatic stress disorder, major depression, substance abuse,
impairment in social functioning and in the ability to work, and
the increased use of health care services.... A problem in the
methods of such studies is the long recall period after exposure to
combat. Very few studies have examined a broad range of mental
health outcomes near to the time of the subjects’
deployment,” according to the investigation.
The all-volunteer forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have been involved
in the first sustained ground combat undertaken by the US since
Vietnam. The researchers surveyed more than 6,000 American soldiers
in the months before and after combat in the two countries. Nearly
17 percent of those who fought in Iraq showed symptoms of PTSD,
major depression or severe anxiety, versus 11 percent for those who
served in Afghanistan. The higher rates of psychiatric trauma
reported by troops returning from Iraq reflected a greater exposure
to combat, with some 90 percent of the soldiers in Iraq having been
in a firefight, compared to 31 percent in Afghanistan.
“For all groups responding after deployment, there was a
strong relation between combat experiences, such as being shot at,
handling dead bodies, knowing someone who was killed, or killing
enemy combatants and the prevalence of PTSD,” stated the NEJM
researchers.
The NEJM study is not the first indicator of major problems. In
February, Mark Benjamin of UPI reported that as many as one out of
ten US soldiers being evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan to the
army’s biggest hospital in Europe, the Landstuhl Regional
Medical Center in Germany, was being sent there for psychiatric or
behavioral health issues.
The NEJM issue also carried an editorial by Dr. Matthew J.
Friedman, director of the Department of Veterans Affairs at the
National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Friedman
discussed the relationship between mental trauma and the nature and
character of a war.
“Indeed, there is reason for concern that the reported
prevalence of PTSD of 15.6 to 17.1 percent among those returning
from Operation Iraqi Freedom or Operation Enduring Freedom
[Afghanistan] will increase in coming years.... [O]n the basis of
studies of military personnel who served in Somalia [when the
nature of the mission changed from peacekeeping to the capture of
warlords], it is possible that psychiatric disorders will increase
now that the conduct of the war has shifted from a campaign for
liberation to an ongoing armed conflict with dissident
combatants.
Of course, the war in was never a “campaign for
liberation,” but no doubt many US troops thought it was. The
realization by soldiers that they are engaged in a brutal
occupation and mass repression, Friedman suggested, will have its
own mental and emotional consequences.
He continued ominously: “In short, the estimates of PTSD
reported by [military psychiatrist Charles] Hoge and associates
[authors of the NEJM study] may be conservative not only because of
the methods used in their study but also because it may be too
early to assess the eventual magnitude of the mental health
problems related to the deployment to Operation Iraqi Freedom or
Operation Enduring Freedom.” Besides the change of mission
from “liberation” to occupation, Friedman also cited
extended tours of duty as a cause of mental health
difficulties.
The crisis is further compounded by the fact that military
personnel are skeptical that their use of mental health services
will remain confidential and are apparently “afraid to seek
assistance for fear that a scarlet P could doom their
careers,” observed Friedman.
He warned of an increase in psychological problems among soldiers
despite an important distinction between the present period and the
post-Vietnam war era: “Americans no longer confuse war with
the warrior; those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan enjoy
national support, despite sharp political disagreement about the
war itself.”
Surveys of veterans conducted years after their military service
ended have shown a prevalence of current PTSD among 15 percent of
the Vietnam veterans and 2 to 10 percent among veterans of the
first Gulf War, claimed the NEJM report.
Once called “shell shock” or “combat
fatigue,” PTSD displays symptoms that include flashbacks,
nightmares, panic attacks, feelings of detachment, irritability,
trouble concentrating, emotional outbursts and sleeplessness. The
National Center for PTSD states that PTSD is a highly prevalent
lifetime disorder.
The National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Survey (NVVRS),
conducted between 1986 and 1988, estimated that more than half of
all male Vietnam veterans and almost half of all female Vietnam
veterans—some 1,700,000 in all—have experienced
“clinically serious stress reaction symptoms.”
This translates into a 40 percent divorce rate for male Vietnam
veterans, with 23 percent having high levels of parenting problems.
Almost half of all male Vietnam veterans suffering from PTSD
between 1986 and 1988 have been arrested or jailed at least once,
and the estimated lifetime prevalence of substance abuse or
dependency among male Vietnam veterans is nearly 40 percent.
There is also another psychiatric fallout from the war in Iraq:
suicide.
According to an Army mental-health team studying soldiers in the
combat environments of Iraq and Kuwait last year, there were 23
suicides in Iraq in 2003, mostly young and in lower enlisted ranks.
The survey showed that nearly 90 percent of soldiers were concerned
about not knowing how long they would be deployed, separation from
family, and lack of privacy and personal space.
“Soldiers indicated their most troubling experiences in
combat came from seeing dead bodies (67 percent), being shot at (63
percent), being attacked or ambushed (61 percent) and knowing
someone who was killed or seriously wounded (59 percent)....
Additionally, 72 percent of the soldiers said their unit morale was
low and 52 percent said their own morale was low,” according
to a March dispatch from the Army News Service.
The NEJM study is a preliminary and rather elemental description of
the psychological damage inflicted on a whole generation of
economic conscripts—that is, working class youth bereft of
options—by the Bush administration’s illegal and
open-ended wars of conquest.
The possibility of obtaining career training or a college education
paid for by Uncle Sam—the mantras of the military
recruiters—evaporates with the onset of post-combat mental
illness. Research has documented the profound connection between
the nature of a war—the reasons why men and women
fight—and the degree of psychic trauma endured by the
fighters. A rotten colonialist enterprise based on lies is wreaking
havoc on the minds of those obliged to carry it out.
Dry scientific data conveys only so much; it takes a poet on the
order of Wilfred Owen (1893-1918), who fought and died in World War
I, to capture something of this nightmarish ordeal:
These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.
Memory fingers in their hair of murders,
Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.
Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,
Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.
Always they must see these things and hear them,
Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles,
Carnage incomparable and human squander
Rucked too thick for these men’s extrication.
—from Mental Cases
Copyright 1998-2004
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