God, the Army, and PTSD
Is religion an obstacle to treatment?When Roger Benimoff arrived at the psychiatric building of the Coatesville, Pennsylvania veterans’ hospital, he was greeted by a message carved into a nearby tree stump: “Welcome Home.” It was a reminder that things had not turned out as he had expected.
In Faith Under Fire, a memoir about Benimoff’s life as an Army chaplain in Iraq, Benimoff and co-author Eve Conant describe his return from Iraq to his family in Colorado and subsequent assignment to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He retreated deep into himself, spending hours on the computer and racking up ten thousand dollars in debt on eBay. Above all, he was angry and jittery, scared even of his young sons, and barely able to make it through the day. He was eventually admitted to Coatesville’s “Psych Ward.” For a while the lock-down facility was his home. He wondered where God was in all of this, and was not alone in that bewilderment and pain.
In a 2004 study of approximately 1,400 Vietnam veterans, almost 90 percent Christian, researchers at Yale found that nearly one-third said the war had shaken their faith in God and that their religion no longer provided comfort for them. The Yale study found that these soldiers were more likely than others to seek mental health treatment through the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) when they came home. It was not that these veterans had unusually high confidence in government or especially good information about services at VA hospitals. Instead, they had fallen into a spiritual abyss and were desperate to find a way out. The trauma of war seems to be especially acute for men and women whose faith in a benevolent God is challenged by the carnage they have witnessed.
Of course, not all veterans with mental health concerns are led to VA hospitals by a loss of faith: many simply want to get a night’s sleep without being terrorized by nightmares. Whatever kind of assistance they are seeking, it has been in increasingly short supply. The decline in resources for veterans’ mental health services started in the 1980s, as part of a nationwide effort to move psychiatric patients into outpatient treatment. The number of inpatient psychiatric beds fell from 9,000 in the late ’80s to 3,000 by 2008.
During the Iraq war, however, the great difficulty veterans experienced in getting psychiatric care—greater than before—was not a product of cost-cutting, but of conviction: many Bush administration officials believed that soldiers who supported the war would not face psychological problems, and if they did, they would find comfort in faith. In a resigned tone, one prominent researcher who worked for the VA, and asked that he not be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the press, explained that high-ranking officials believed that “Jesus fixes everything.” Benimoff and the others who returned with devastating psychological injuries found a faith-based bureau within the VA. At veterans’ hospitals, chaplains were conducting spirituality assessments of patients.
The story of the mistreatment of returning veterans from Iraq is well known and shocking. But the role of religious ideology in that mistreatment—how, inside the government, it was a potent tool in the betrayal of an overwhelmingly Christian Army—is much less known.
“I couldn’t stand to hear that phrase any longer—‘God was watching over me,’” Benimoff wrote.
He wasn’t watching over the good men I knew in Iraq. Faith was the center of my life yet it failed to explain why I came home and those soldiers did not. The phrase was a Christian nicety, a cliché that when put to the test didn’t fit reality.
• • •
Things had already begun to change dramatically at the VA by early 2005, shortly after Roger Benimoff left for his second deployment to Iraq. Many appointees at the agency were disturbed that so many Iraq veterans showed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In part the concern grew from skepticism about the diagnosis itself, which some believed to be a legacy of the Vietnam-era anti-war movement. Whatever the merits of the diagnosis, it was clearly widespread and, moreover, staggeringly expensive to treat. In 2008 the RAND Corporation put a number on the problem, reporting that one in five veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has suffered some form of mental illness, mostly PTSD and depression.
“God doesn’t like ugly,” one political appointee told Paul Sullivan, an analyst in the VA’s Veterans Benefits Administration, in a clumsy attempt to reduce the cost of caring for psychologically traumatized veterans. “You need to make the numbers lower.” Sullivan left the VA in 2006 and became head of Veterans for Common Sense, a group that filed a class-action lawsuit against the secretary of the VA for the shoddy treatment of veterans. It was dismissed in 2008 and is now being appealed.
PTSD, along with its diagnosis and treatment, has been a charged subject in the United States since the term was introduced nearly three decades ago. Studying returning veterans and working with a group of psychiatrists and others in the 1970s, former Air Force psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton pushed to create an entry for “post-traumatic stress disorder” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the official manual of the American Psychiatric Association. Lifton and his colleagues believed that the kind of horror induced by the experience of war and other comparably catastrophic shocks needed a special category that would distinguish it from lesser kinds of trauma. A definition appeared in the DSM-III in 1980. The DSM-IV, published in 1994, included revised diagnostic criteria that reduced the severity of the external shock required to induce PTSD. From the start, conservatives charged that the disorder was created by anti-war activists with a political agenda. The debate about it has been marked by passion, rhetoric, politics, and religion, all of which have only made things worse for the individuals who have suffered from the disorder.
Tens of thousands of soldiers, including Benimoff, have been diagnosed with PTSD, which occurs when an individual responds to a traumatic event with “intense fear” and feelings of helplessness. For PTSD sufferers, that experience is followed by horrifying nightmares, hyper-vigilance, sleeplessness, and other potentially debilitating symptoms. Some of those diagnosed with the disorder never recover, and for this reason skeptics say that the DSM definition has turned ordinary men and women into chronic sufferers, dependent on government assistance and relieved of responsibility for their own lives. It is true that some Iraq veterans with full-blown PTSD diagnoses have been granted government benefits—usually between $200 and $2,600 per month—even though they might be able to support themselves. (I have met several of them while traveling across the country.) Nonetheless, far more suffer either with poor care or no care at all.
• • •
One soldier I spoke with, Army Specialist Bill Haynes, had grown up attending Highland Baptist Church in Paducah, Kentucky, and was awarded a Bronze Star for his courage during a March 2005 battle in Iraq. When he came home, he was plagued with a recurring nightmare. “At first, it was the same thing over and over and over,” he told me. “It was the March 20 attack. Then one time in my dream, we didn’t have any guns at all, and I knew we were all going to get captured and tortured and killed. This dream was so damn real.”
Haynes saw a therapist at the VA and, like so many veterans who sought help, was given a prescription for trazodone, an antidepressant. He was also sent to group therapy, but the sessions were filled with civilians. “They’re like, ‘I was working in a warehouse, and a piling fell on my head,’” as he recalls. His nightmares centered around the bloodshed he had witnessed on a highway near Salman Pak, an Iraqi city near Baghdad.
Haynes had a hard time relating to the problems the other patients in the therapy sessions described, so he stopped going. He took the antidepressant and drank a lot of bourbon in an attempt to quiet his mind. Neither method worked particularly well, so he tried to shoot himself with a handgun. His wife stopped him, and over time the intensity of the nightmare seemed to fade. “You know, it comes and goes,” he says. Several years after the battle, he sometimes takes over-the-counter painkillers before going to bed so he will not be haunted by the dream.
The treatment for PTSD varies widely; there is little agreement on the best method. However, most experts believe that treatment should be determined by a careful case-by-case analysis, and will most likely include a combination of therapy and medication and, in some cases, a spiritual dimension. Some veterans do well when they receive only counseling, in either group or individual sessions.
Medication alone rarely works, as the family of Derek Henderson, another Iraq veteran, discovered after he returned from the war in 2003. Henderson suffered from psychotic episodes and terrorized the people around him. He carried a knife and other weapons and once tried to run over his mother with a car. She tried repeatedly to get him admitted to the VA hospital in Kentucky for proper care, but nobody was willing to take responsibility for him. Instead, he was admitted for short stints and given prescriptions for a variety of antipsychotic medications. Finally, in June 2007, he jumped off a bridge over the Ohio River and drowned. In this and in other cases, the veterans were not getting a course of treatment tailored for them. All too often they were given a handful of prescriptions and sent on their way. Bruce S. McEwen, a neuroscientist at The Rockefeller University who has spent decades studying post-traumatic stress, told me, “The simple pharmaceutical solutions are just that—oversimplified.” Veterans’ advocates say the pared-down treatment and the over-reliance on drugs is a result of government skepticism about PTSD, and the desire to cut costs.
• • •
Sullivan was working as an analyst at the Veterans Benefits Administration in Washington in early 2005 when he was called to a meeting with a top political appointee at the VA, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy Michael McLendon. McLendon, an intensely focused man in a neatly pressed suit, kept a Bible on his desk at the office. Sullivan explained to McLendon and the other attendees that the rise in benefits claims the VA was noticing was caused partly by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who were suffering from PTSD. “That’s too many,” McLendon said, then hit his hand on the table. “They are too young” to be filing claims, and they are doing it “too soon.” He hit the table again. The claims, he said, are “costing us too much money,” and if the veterans “believed in God and country . . . they would not come home with PTSD.” At that point, he slammed his palm against the table a final time, making a loud smack. Everyone in the room fell silent.
“I was a little bit surprised,” Sullivan said, recalling the incident. “In that one comment, he appeared to be a religious fundamentalist.” For Sullivan, McLendon’s remarks reflected the views of many political appointees in the VA and revealed what was behind their efforts to reduce costs by restricting claims. The backlog of claims was immense, and veterans, often suffering extreme psychological stress, had to wait an average of five months for decisions on their requests.
When I asked him years later about the meeting, McLendon laughed. Then his face darkened in anger. “Anybody who knows me knows I wouldn’t talk that way.”
Nevertheless, McLendon was open about the skepticism he felt toward the diagnosis of PTSD, calling it “a made-up term,” which has “taken on a life of its own.” As he spoke about the diagnosis, he pounded the table with the side of his hand more than ten times, hitting it so hard that the wooden surface shook. “Do I think they have a mental illness and should be stigmatized for the rest of their life?” he asked. “What gives a psychiatrist the right to do that?”
Later, in an email about our conversation, he wrote:
[PTSD] is not a diagnosis based on empirical evidence, but rather . . . it is an artificial construct erected by a vote of selected psychiatrists. This does not mean that there are not problems that certain individuals do have [and] issues that need to be addressed. But rather, it means that we have created policies and programs that have not served veterans well.
He recommended several books on the subject, including The Selling of DSM, whose authors, Stuart Kirk and Herb Kutchins, show a deep mistrust about the disorder and the scientific rhetoric surrounding the diagnosis. McLendon’s outlook seems to have had a significant impact on the way veterans are treated upon their return from war.
McLendon and many of the other high-level officials at the VA shared political convictions that, along with doubts about the science of PTSD, made them less likely to push for additional psychiatric services for veterans. They believed in streamlined government and free markets, and they supported a prominent role for faith-based organizations. The secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, R. James Nicholson, had previously served as chairman of the Republican National Committee and as ambassador to the Vatican. McLendon’s politics closely mirror his boss’s, and under Nicholson’s watch, veterans had increasing difficulty in obtaining adequate psychological care.
When a 2006 Government Accountability Office report raised questions about whether soldiers were getting the psychiatric help they needed, an assistant secretary of defense disputed the report’s findings, pointing to the fact that soldiers were being referred to chaplains. During this time contracts for veterans’ services were increasingly parceled out to leaders of faith-based organizations rather than to secular ones, even though veterans’ advocates opposed any bias toward faith-based treatment and argued that replacing empirically proven, nonsectarian programs with faith-based ones was a mistake.
The religious programs grew, despite concerns. At the VA Healthcare Network in upstate New York, chaplains compiled spirituality assessments of patients within twenty-four hours of their arrival. The VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System gave patients a questionnaire that stated one of the System’s goals as helping veterans “Maintain Optimal Spiritual Health.” In Coatesville, patients in the psychiatric ward had a daily, thirty-minute block of time scheduled for “SPIRITUAL UPLIFTING.” Meanwhile Benimoff wondered, “what kind of God would allow people to sink to the depths we here in this ward had sunk?”
• • •
For spiritual uplift, many soldiers and veterans depend heavily on pop-Christian books, especially Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life, and themes of divine purpose and devotion to God. As a chaplain in Iraq, Benimoff himself used the book to cope with the mayhem. He also relied on it to help the troubled soldiers he knew, and he appreciated that the book emphasized helping other people, while other spiritual self-help books tended to promote selfishness. But even a book like The Purpose Driven Life could not solve the problems he faced. Over time, he began to wonder about his own purpose in Iraq and about the government’s, and he felt uncertain and scared.
We had gone to Iraq because there were weapons of mass destruction stockpiled across the country, yet those weapons were never found and may never have existed. I had gone to Iraq thinking that was the cause. But if the cause had been wrong, what did that say about our role there, and mine?
As Benimoff and other soldiers eventually discovered, The Purpose Driven Life was not helpful, especially as the war’s own purpose grew less clear. Since Vietnam we have learned that PTSD tends to hit people especially hard when they fight in wars of choice. Bobby Muller, the head of Veterans for America, told me it was difficult for soldiers to talk about the war in Vietnam after they came home; years later, though:
I would get in touch with some of these guys, and they all had to come to the realization, ‘This is bullshit.’ It’s not just the horror of killing, but its context. . . . If you’re fighting a necessary war, it’s awful. But it’s kind of what you got to do. Let’s take a war that turns out to have been unnecessary. And in fact your leadership betrayed you. That willingness to serve was betrayed by a leadership that lied and squandered that trust. The very moral fabric of your life gets ripped apart.
Despite its limitations, The Purpose Driven Life is still used in the military to inspire soldiers and ease doubts about their mission. Nobody forces soldiers or veterans to read The Purpose Driven Life, of course, but it is extremely popular. Paperback copies are passed around among soldiers, and one edition of the book was published with a camouflage cover, a savvy move by the publisher that helped tap into the military market.
In May Harper’s magazine reported that at a mandatory 2008 suicide-prevention assembly of 1,000 aviators at a U.S. Air Force base in Lakenheath, England, a chaplain relied on the book for his presentation. Warren’s inspirational messages did not always take hold, though, and one soldier, LaVena Johnson, who ended up killing herself in Iraq, according to military documents, had a copy of The Purpose Driven Life.
Many soldiers turned to the book for solace once they came home. One Kentucky veteran who had been wounded in a 2005 battle in Iraq kept the book in his basement apartment, but nevertheless tried to shoot himself and was admitted to a lock-down psychiatric ward in a VA hospital. Nobody believes that the book itself drove him and others to suicide or attempts to end their own lives, but its popularity is yet another indication of the existential despair that many soldiers and veterans feel after serving in combat and the desperation with which they seek help. Military culture places high value on self-reliance, so a spiritual self-help book made sense for Johnson and fellow fighters. But their stories show that, when faced with the immense task of coming to terms with the horror of war, an inspirational book such as The Purpose Driven Life, or a prescription for antidepressants, or any other simplistic approach to the problem, is inadequate.
• • •
The 2010 budget proposed by President Obama includes the largest funding increase for veterans in the past thirty years, and much of it is devoted to treatment of PTSD. The new secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, Eric Shinseki, a retired general who was injured in Vietnam (and fought with Rumsfeld over the size of the force needed in Iraq), has shown a strong commitment to the care of veterans. Unfortunately, bureaucracies are slow to respond. After years of neglect during the Bush administration, veterans now have nearly one million claims pending, a record high for the agency. VA officials say that, technically, it is not a backlog, because thousands of claims are resolved each month, and thousands more are added. But none can deny that the situation is enormously frustrating for suffering veterans.
The political fallout from the Iraq war and the government’s failure to care for its veterans has been far-reaching. Shortly before Benimoff resumed his chaplaincy—now at Walter Reed—stories describing inadequate treatment at the hospital appeared in The Washington Post, appalling the public. “I was walking into an institutional crisis,” he wrote. “I’ll speak for myself when I say it felt like everything was broken. If the system was broken, so was I—a broken healer for broken soldiers in a broken system. God save us all.
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About the Author
Tara McKelvey, Senior Editor at The American Prospect, is author of Monstering: Inside America's Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture and a 2009 Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellow in Science and Religion.
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Only if it substitutes for therapy, I'd say.
I also wondered if one might not be better off reading the bible, rather than a more easily understood theology-lite. One cannot rationally understand violence, fear and death anyway; so why do as if?
As well, successful religion, as propagated by leaders of mega-churches, seems to me inherently contradictory--if one assumes, as I do, that religious conviction is a highly personal affair.
And a last comment: "Military culture places high value on self-reliance...", states the author. Actually, I rather doubt it. Military culture demands obedience, which, in the face of possible imminent death is indeed a heroic mindset.
Major Hasan would have been familiar with the conditions described in this essay. As psychiatrist at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center for the last five years he would have both treated patients for PTSD and have been familiar with the preference for faith based treatments described in this article.
We hear from Major Hasan's family that he complained about religious harassment during his tenure at Walter Reed but we do not know specifics. It is reasonable to believe that his patients suffering from PTSD might not have liked being treated by a Muslim and almost certainly heard specific opinions about Islam and Muslims from those patients. The inevitable investigation into Major Hasan's career will reveal the dynamic of those patient interactions.
But what will be missing from that record is this: what role, if any, did a the promotion of predominantly Christian faith based treatments have on Major Hasan's relationship with his superiors and on his mindset?
We have seen that the willingness of certain groups to emphasize our post 2001 wars in Asia as "crusades" has lead to blowback at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. Is it possible that Major Hasan's murderous rampage had its roots in this desire to frame our conflicts as a war against Islam?
Calling Dana Priest....
As Veterans Day approaches, I hope we will remember not only veterans who have sacrificed their nervous systems through war-related trauma, but also the women who have endured sexual assault and even homicide while serving their country. Please read more about Johnson's case at www.lavenajohnson.com.
There is something to this story, but the way it's presented here does nothing more than give defenders of the VA talking points on how to repel the inadequate arguments of its more hysterical critics.
In addition to have to put up with the 'spiritual' bent of the VA there is widespread
efforts to 'evangelize' the military that goes to the highest Flag Ranks and the halls of Congress (See: Exposed: ‘C Street’ and The Military Exposed by Chris Rodda, http://pubrecord.org/religion/3427/exposed-street-military ) Gen. Petraeus endorsed the , Under Orders: A Spiritual Handbook for Military Personnel. A a pro-Christian, anti-everything else book being distributed to the troops.
Randal asked "Because one political appointee thinks that way?" There are a hell of a lot more than the 2 mentioned in the article. An organization rots from the top down and Nicholson was nothing but a poetical hack doing his part in Dubya's crusade.
Side note to poster #6 Tim Connelly - Look for an EFT practitioner.
WHR Rivers, on Great War PTSD: Shell shock.
I'm saying this for your own good.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/11062009/profile.html
Covers 4 ptsd stories from WWII, Vietnam & Iraq. Excellent.
For 20 years, I have been faithfully going to the VA for PTSD treatment but still haven't found the darn thing. Oh well, I'll be dead before I figure it out.
It's there, bubba. If you dodn't have one, you wouldn't be hurtin'. I know whence I speak.
max
['Sincere here.']
Between "skills" classes that teach new coping-response tools and techniques, and various talk-therapies such as Cognitive Processing Therapy and others -- I'm not "cured", but after a good while in the program (ongoing) - my classmates and I are undeniable proof that talk therapy effects more REAL CHANGE than pills CAN.
There is no magic pill that makes future pills for PTSD unneeded. Psych meds DON'T work like antibiotics that cure you in 10 days.
Proper and timely talk therapy, as well as learning beneficial coping skills, *CAN* help to limit how many pills a person has to take in the future.
Unfortunately, therapists cost more than pills, so the VA is caught up in a feedback loop -- a lifetime of pills costs a lot of money, but only a little bit at a time; whereas, a few years of therapy costs a lot in a shorter amount of time. I doubt anyone has ever done a widescale study to find out whether investing a whole lot in a year or few of intense talk therapy specifically for PTSD could actually save money in the longrun compared to a lifetime of psych meds.
One thing is certain, talk therapy doesn't cause liver damage, kidney damage, motor-impairment, or any of those other potential pill side effects -- avoiding those things alone saves the VA a WHOLE LOT of money for lifetime medical problems secondarily caused by the exact meds prescribed to manage PTSD symptoms.
And thanks for the advice John Emerson. Maybe I'll take it when you start showing some critical ability. Take your pedantry elsewhere.
but some Vets did. We all put our lives on the line for our country in a war that was totally BS. Denying PTSD even exists is a slap in the face for all of us. To ask someone to substitute prayer for actual treatment is a slap in the face for all veterans.
During a difficult divorce I went to a psychiatrist for some help. Within two minutes of the session start, he asked me if I had tried prayer. Him charging $75 for 45 minutes and asking me this question made me see red. I jumped out of the chair and told him to kiss my *ss: that if I wanted superstitious BS, I would have gone to see a minister for no charge. I never did pay him. It seems that religion is the first thing out of the mouths of people trying to hide the fact that they do not have a clue as to what is happening in the real world.
Keep up the enjoyable posts Randall.
On the institutional level, what this article shows clearly is the failure of those who live in the comfort of "home" to understand that gravity of the situation that warriors face in combat and the significance of the challenge that war presents to religious perspectives that have not met, head-on and completely, the ugly realities of combat, including its often random and senseless destruction of human lives. I am thankful that the mindset seems to be shifting and people are taking the suffering of returning warriors more seriously, and I can only hope and pray that the trend to take seriously, not the religious perspectives that may/may not be important to policy makers themselves, but the damaged belief systems of the warriors will continue.
Finally, a religious perspective that fails the test of an encounter with the depths of human suffering and pain that often characterize life in this world and that provides, rather, some Christianized version of self-help, demonstrates a serious lack of authenticity. I has to be stated that not all religions display this inadequacy, and neither do all versions of the Christian faith. The simple fact is that some spiritual traditions answer key questions about evil in this world in more adequate ways than others. Would this necessarily prevent PTSD? I have no evidence to make that claim, so I will not make it. However, I would argue that the ability of a faith system to deal with and assimilate the reality of evil, pain, sin, alienation, war, natural disasters, and the like may bolster the faith system against collapse in the face of combat or other forms of trauma. Further, there are countless other spiritual traditions than the ones presented in the article that could never be used at the institutional level to dismiss the suffering warriors.
The point is this: there are certain kinds of religious viewpoints that stand highly susceptible to collapse in the face of trauma because those viewpoints do not adequately address key realities of the world we live in: realities that become overwhelmingly in war. I think the overly-optimistic popular Christian message in America is one such inadequate perspective, as McKelvey demonstrates well in this article. Thank you.
It is not clear to me how witnessing extreme violence and destruction and experiencing lethal danger can in any humanly imaginable manner be made tolerable by a religious belief.
Religious conviction can only be a counterbalancing force in a person's life if and when the conviction is stronger than the abhorrence one has witnessed.
And what does that say about religion?
In my view, religion does not exist to 'make violence and destruction tolerable,' and, in fact, the tolerability of such horrors is not the point. The point is how a given system of belief (which naturally includes convictions related to religion) accounts for the intolerable horrors that often occur in the world.
Religion, for many people, is far more than one among many coping mechanisms; rather, religion can form a narrative within which the intolerable and painful find their place (which does not make them any less horrible or more tolerable). Rather than shattering the narrative, these painful realities become assimilated into the narrative in all their profundity and ugliness.
In answer to the question Ted poses above, I would respond thus: What this says about religion is that the concept of religion as a counterbalancing force is a concept of religion that neither I nor many others would espouse. Rather, it is precisely the concept of religion that is susceptible to collapse in the face of pain and suffering.
I would never argue for a view of religion that explains religion (or at least not the Christian tradition in which I worship and live) as a consolation or a counterbalance--this is a problem for some belief systems and is characteristic of the type of religion critiqued in McKelvey's article. The article is deficient in that "religion" and "God" represent broad, multivalent terms to which McKelvey assigns a very narrow and unrepresentative sample, and this is done without explanation.
I remain thankful for the thought-provoking article, and I hasten to add that I concur wholeheartedly with McKelvey's concern for the ill-treatment of returning warriors. PTSD is real and deserves the attention that it seems to be getting with increasing focus and sincerity.
Before the condition was called PTSD, it was known as "battle fatigue." Before THAT, it was known--during and after the First World War--as "shell shock."
For all I know, the disorder may have been recognized even earlier--I'm far from an expert.
But I know it goes back at least to WWI.
In 1965, Archibald and Tuddenham reported on WWII vets who had never been to a VA for help who were still suffering nightmares, startle responses, etc, 20 years after the war. This paper was totally ignored.
When my husband came back from Vietnam in 1966, he couldn't sleep. Eventually as he got worse, he was taken off flight status for combat fatigue, which also meant, in writing, that he could never be sent back into a combat zone. Now we see people being sent back over and over on medications with PTSD. This is the greatest disgrace of this war.
The International Conference of War Veteran Ministers, (Vietnamveteranministers.org), is a useful group of people who don't simplify religion into fundamentalist stupidity. Among other things, they point out episodes of PTSD in the Bible. Among other things they led this non-believer to the 137th Psalm which not only describes PTSD, but the stupid reactions to it of the general public (Sing us a song... be happy... don't think about it.)
I also have a blog on blogspot if you want to read more.
Of course I am not surprised that a bunch of so-called Christians (Bush et al) would be so insensitive. They hardly qualify as Christians do they?
Nevertheless, religion as narrative, in which the experience of the intolerable and painful finds its place, strikes me as a palliative.
I suspect I come at this problem of trauma, violence and unbearable suffering from the perspective of existentialism--which, in a nutshell and in my view, holds that all moral/human/psychological considerations can be assumed to dwell among people, in the mind of people, without reference to a God. This might not appeal to religious believers, although it is itself of course a belief system.
I believe people all too readily refer to God as an explanatory gambit, thereby arrogating unto themselves a knowledge greater than they are entitled too, a kind of oneupmanship of the soul--if you don't believe them, you are bound to be wrong. That, it seems to me, conveys the impression that religious belief is somehow superior.
As well, I recognize around me myriads of explanations for reality that are offered without reference to God. I, naturally, find these personally untenable because I have committed myself to a Christian worldview, and it is a worldview that has been hammered out on the anvil of difficult experiences. Each person chooses his/her own explanatory matrix within which to find meaning in the world, and I agree with you that often God becomes a simplistically conceived, one-dimensional answer to some of life's most perplexing difficulties.
When appealed to in this simplistic way, I agree that God become palliative; what Marx called "the opiate of the people." What I am trying to convey, and perhaps with less effectiveness than I had hoped, is the fact that some systems of belief offer simplistic consolations that do not hold up under the pressure of the kinds of suffering that people often encounter in combat. They do not hold up precisely because they are simplistic and one-dimensional and do not represent an adequate explanation for God's interaction with the world and with those who "call upon the name of the Lord." In short, many views of God are palliative, and they break down precisely because God never intended to be a palliative measure. The assumption here, of course, is that God is not simply the creation of the human mind. God need not be (though often is) viewed as a human invention designed to comfort frail humans amidst their painful sojourn on earth. In a full narrative of God's interaction with the world and its people, the reality of God's existence and his purposes does carry significant explanatory power, but the goal is to deal with and respond to God, not to demand that God comfort us in our struggle.
To that extent, our positions are the same, or close. Existentialism offers an explanatory matrix, albeit without reference to God, in which one may understand reality, and I respect that position (though it is not mine). It is itself a narrative that seeks to explain and account for human experience in the world. It attempts to answer the questions that have plagued the human mind and heart from the beginning of abstract thought and language. And I agree fully that "religious oneupmanship" is both annoying and unsatisfying. Further, I would not assert that my religious belief system is necessarily superior because of its reference to God, although I do believe in it with all my being.
I am hoping to make this point: while religion can be simply palliative, it need not necessarily be any more palliative than any other explanation that seeks to account for the reality of the world in which we live. The overly-simplistic and unqualified and arrogant appeal to God that often characterizes the responses of those Christians who frequently make it into the attention of the media is problematic and unfounded, in my opinion. But not all religious responses to human suffering follow this trajectory, and that is the corrective I wish to offer to McKelvey's article.
What you rarely see--both because it has become increasingly rare and hardly ever gets the attention of the media--are the humble adherents to religious belief systems who wrestle with the hard issues of life and who express a depth of encounter both with God and with the world. The countless unheard believers who respect, and even admire, belief systems other than their own and who refuse to give simplistic "Sunday school" answers in the face of deep suffering and human pain rarely get noticed, and neither do those who do not present themselves in triumphalistic superiority. But they are out there. Thanks, Ted.
A/k/a in WW1 as 'Lack of moral fiber'!
Your 'worldview...has been hammered out on the anvil of difficult experience', as you say. Far be it from me to be critical of that experience--or even try to judge it against your religious belief.
I myself have not been exposed to grave danger or immeasurable trauma, but point out that others have--and they do not necessarily refer to God in their efforts to cope.
As well, I don't understand existentialism to 'offer an explanatory matrix...', as you say. Rather, I see it as a form of humanism whereby one takes humans seriously in and of themselves, without mentioning God.
What interests me most of all is how one handles one's life if one ignored God for a while. I am quite sure He wouldn't mind.
Christ's last words are said to have been: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me".
I have taken that to mean that either God doesn't exist, or that Jesus lost faith at the last moment of truth.
I have to admit, as difficult as my life has seemed at times, I have certainly not seen the worst of pain and trauma, so I am not speaking from a place significant suffering. And I agree that there are many who find their way to healing after significant trauma who would not share my worldview or my religious convictions. As you note, God is not a requirement for coping with trauma or for healing from it.
I often work with those who advocate for veterans and who push for resources to help war vets heal from the trauma of war, and many of those I work with do not share my religious perspective. I respect both their differing perspectives and their passion for their work with vets. Healing from things like PTSD often requires therapeutic approaches that are religion-neutral yet very effective. What MeKelvey points out convincingly is the fact that when trauma is not handled in effective ways, a person cannot heal, and if a person's religion inhibits their treatment, than religion "gets in the way" of healing rather than facilitating it. I have seen this in my work as a chaplain, and it is sad to watch. Equally tragic are the cases where the religious views of policy makers cloud their ability to discern the legitimate needs of traumatized war vets (such as the cases McKelvey points out where PTSD is not taken seriously).
You and I approach the world from different perspectives and we disagree on many fundamental issues. What I think we agree on is that human beings should be taken seriously in and of themselves and that veterans who have suffered the traumas of war deserve treatment that does not violate their belief systems or attempt to strong-arm them into a belief system they don't espouse. Human dignity is violated when God is either forced on people or when God becomes an excuse not to treat people's suffering seriously and with proven methods of healing.
To many assume them self in that mindset and it is destined to fail, Alas, you are not God,
I shall be arrogant enough to suggest to always go lightly on theological superstructure--which is a dense and burning thicket from whence few emerge unharmed.
My view on trauma is this: the individual is supposed to be light, spirit, energy and endless endeavor to grow. These qualities are diminished or even entirely destroyed for the traumatized person. How does one 'kindle' the fire again? Religion can easily be felt as a bucket of cold water on a timid flame; so can psychobabble of whatever kind.
Perhaps a little hope is left in the traumatized individual. Perhaps it is not completely inconceivable to imagine beginning to live again--living as light and forward moving force.
Hope is good to work with. Without hope, why bother at all?
The question remains: what is hope? And another: how does it grow?
We can agree that it is something extremely precious--at least the kind of hope that does not have its roots in materialism.
BIG difference.
A high rate of 'successful' treatment for PTSD is found in clinical trials, as high as 70 percent, so far, in some settings. Summarized here:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=psychedelic-healing
Scientific American MIND - December 2007
Psychedelic Healing? -- hallucinogenic drugs, which blew minds in the 1960s, soon may be used to treat mental ailments -- By David Jay Brown
Mind-altering psychedelics are back—but this time they are being explored in labs for their therapeutic applications rather than being used illegally. Studies are looking at these hallucinogens to treat a number of otherwise intractable psychiatric disorders, including chronic depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and drug or alcohol dependency.
The past 15 years have seen a quiet resurgence of psychedelic drug research as scientists have come to recognize the long-underappreciated potential of these drugs. In the past few years, a growing number of studies using human volunteers have begun to explore the possible therapeutic benefits of drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, DMT, MDMA, ibogaine and ketamine.
Much remains unclear about the precise neural mechanisms governing how these drugs produce their mind-bending results, but they often produce somewhat similar psychoactive effects that make them potential therapeutic tools. Though still in their preliminary stages, studies in humans suggest that the day when people can schedule a psychedelic session with their therapist to overcome a serious psychiatric problem may not be that far off.
The Trip Begins
Psychedelic drug research began in 1897, when German chemist Arthur Heffter first isolated mescaline, the primary psychoactive compound in the peyote cactus. In 1943 Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann discovered the hallucinogenic effects of LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) at Sandoz Pharmaceuticals in Basel while studying ergot, a fungus that grows on rye. Fifteen years later, in 1958, he was the first to isolate psilocybin and psilocin—the psychoactive components of the Mexican “magic mushroom,” Psilocybe mexicana.
Before 1972, close to 700 studies with psychedelic drugs took place. The research suggested that psychedelics offered significant benefits: they helped ...
In speaking with the intake people at the VA, the long delays in claims processing are two-fold: (1)the interval between the claimed trauma and filing a claim (in many cases there are YEARS between the two -- and in the big increase in vietnam vets DECADES) and (2) the number of veterans who have suddenly discovered their PTSD (srsly).
Until the regulations recently changed, the delay -- besides getting copies of forms, records and other information -- was typically a result of the vet needing to prove a link between service and the condition (now the VA will have to prove that there is no such link so long as the servicemember's service was consistent with the stressor claimed and he/she is diagnosed with PTSD). If a veteran lacks the information required for the claim (service records, for example) there will still be delays in processing claims.
While I am no big fan of Mr. Bush, I object to the Bush-bashing in closing this article. The 2010 VA appropriation is for TWO years (long overdue to assist the VA in planning); the appropriations and funding levels & mandates are the result of proposals and priorities established by the Bush administration via the many studies and Blue Ribbon panels established on Warrior Care -- not Obama's admin. You'll recall that it was Shinseki who proposed in the first 90 days that veterans fund their own health care with their private insurance... until the hue & cry of the veterans' community forced tabling that idea. just sayin'
LAVENA JOHNSON DID NOT COMMIT SUICIDE.
She was murdured.
Please acknowledge your error in using her as some ready-made example for your article.
http://lavenajohnson.com/
Her father Dr. Johnson examined her body and his findings were at odds with the army report. Her body was re-clothed after injury (burns, bites, bruises, cracked teeth) and evidently moved.
The tragic story of LaVena Johnson
http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2008/06/27/lavena_johnson/index.html?source=refresh
To put it, starkly;
How A Woman Can Commit Suicide in the U.S. Army
1. Break your own nose.
2. Blacken one of your eyes.
3. Punch yourself in the jaw so hard that teeth is loosen.
4. Burn your genitals with acid.
5. Walk in and out of your tent to create trail of blood.
6. Ignore the discomforting results of the above steps, and accurately shoot self in the head.
DONE! Have Army Investigators close your case; Suicide
All the people who pass judgement on this disorder as something that can be "cured" by "religious or faith based initiatives" or try to still chalk it up as the offspring of fakers do not, nor have they ever had, PTSD. They are just a gaggle of ingnorant talking heads or troglodyte government bean counters. They are clueless.
Group "talk" therapy with your peers every two weeks with a clinical psychologist, one on one with a clinical psychologist frequently, one on one with a psychiatrist not greater than every three months to gauge progress and check meds, more often if you need it - this is the formula that works, at least for me, and countless others with PTSD from WW2, Korea, Nam, Gulf, Iraq, & Afghanistan.
PTSD is not unique to Combat Veterans. Wait until the traumas of school shootings, 9/11, and the like, really sink in and blossom. Is anyone going to tell these people that they are faking or are in need of some evangelical head banging? Sometimes it can take 10 to 20 years for the top of your head to pop off.
PTSD is a condition of just being human.
As a combat veteran, I can assure you that no one returns the same. Those who've seen even the residual horrors of combat will be affected by it. War leaves an indelible mark of evil on the landscape and the people in its path. No one - not even the strongest among us - is immune.
PTSD can, in some ways, be seen as the lingering effect of touching or being touched by evil. Despite all our military training, nothing prepares us sufficiently for war's profound impact on the human psyche. At minimum, it leaves a certain sadness in the heart of everyone who experiences a combat zone. At its worst, it drives them to murder or suicide.
There's been a stigma in the Army about seeking psychological help when you feel the need. This has contributed to the PTSD problem. The Army has taken a very long time to even acknowledge that this problem - or the stigma - exists. However, in the upper ranks, it's known and acknowledged. In time, this will work its way down to the lower ranks...one can only hope it doesn't take too long to trickle down.
In the meantime, faith-based organizations are working valiantly to raise awareness and offer education and resources. When evil is the root of the problem, support from religious organizations is of tremendous relevance and value. I know I'm not alone in my gratitude for their dedication and persistence.
Jeff Courter
http://www.LifeLoveandTruth.com
"McClendon was working on the VA projects to reduce veterans' benefits with such tactics as make-work jobs, reduction of Individual Unemployability benefits, and far less medical care.
...
The White House 2005 Conference on Aging gave Mr. McLendon a special place on the President's web sites. [Information cited] indicates that Mr. McLendon is an "insider" neoconservative Republican who has climbed from agency to agency without any real expertise or accomplishment. He appears to be another "heckava job, Brownie" crony who was intimately involved in ways to "trim" rightful veterans' benefits."
http://www.zoominfo.com/people/McLendon_Michael_75782452.aspx
I thought Mr. Obama pledged to get rid of all these clowns and fix services for our veterans.
I developed PTSD from domestic violence and abuse. I spent years searching for healing and finally found it with Somatic Experiencing by Dr. Peter Levine.
Also the Eat to Live Diet by Dr. Fuhrman helped me immensely. The diet helped calm my anxiety.
Therapists around the world have been trained by him to do Somatic Experiencing which is gentle and slowly paced to help release the trauma from the BODY because that is where much of the trauma is stored. Trauma healing is most effectively done by releasing the stored fight/flight/freeze reaction in the body/mind but also involves healing on a social and spiritual level as well. Studies have shown that gentle, caring support from other people helps us heal and release trauma.
After over 30 years of searching for healing I am FINALLY getting my life back.
If you explore at an online books store like Amazon.com you will find other possible healing methods for overcoming trauma or learning about how it effects you.
As I release the trauma, with Somatic Experiencing, I am more able to find peace in the spiritual as well. I am forever grateful to Dr. Levine.
http://www.traumahealing.com/
Dr. Levine was a stress consultant for NASA during the development of the Space Shuttle, ... Peter served on the World, Psychologists for Social Responsibility, presidents’ initiative on responding to large scale disasters and ethno-political warfare.
There is more information about Trauma Healing at this well known and respected web site by David Baldwin http://www.trauma-pages.com/
The Veterans are in my prayers.
There IS healing - there are many ways to heal.
Neurotransmitter amino acid treatment is another area that is having good results with treating anxiety from stress as well which is safer and more natural. I know someone who is already showing signs of improvement!
http://www.neuroassist.com/default.htm
It is available Amazon and I also have a blog on the subject.
Robert and Annelie Collie