Proposed Army Program Will Encourage Soldiers to Look On The Bright Side of Combat
So these researchers (being encouraged, of course, by fine organizations like the American Enterprise Institute) are working to counterbalance all that gloomy, depressing stuff like post-traumatic stress disorder that people associate with serving in a combat zone.
A sense of personal strength, appreciation for life and love of family have all been enhanced, says Frikken, 39, who directs artillery fire for 10th Mountain Division troops fighting here. "I will never be the same person I was before my combat experiences," he says.
What happens to soldiers like Frikken has led Army leaders to develop a resiliency program that urges GIs to look inward and discover how combat may have made them emotionally stronger.
Research appears to show that many people can emerge from traumatic experiences with greater self-confidence, a keener sense of compassion and appreciation for life, says Brig. Gen. Rhonda Cornum, director of the Army's Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program. Cornum and other experts call this concept post-traumatic growth.
Although the military focuses attention on troops who develop mental health conditions in combat, Cornum says, the majority of war veterans do not suffer post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or other problems.
"We never ask if anybody had some positive outcomes. We only ask about this laundry list of illnesses," says Cornum, referring to a battery of health questions soldiers face when they leave the combat zone.
And this is seen as what we used to call "proof." Traumatized soldiers, who suspect their military careers will take a turn for the worse if they admit to problems, have no incentive at all to pretend they're fine. Right? And of course, it couldn't possibly be that the trauma itself might make them less likely to admit it! (Even though we've read stories of vets who were later denied benefits because they didn't admit they had a problem when asked to fill out the questionnaire.) God knows, I'm not saying everyone who sees combat has PTSD. But to base your conclusion on whether soldiers admitted they had problems is nowhere near a scientific method.
She often alludes to her experiences as a prisoner during the Persian Gulf War. Cornum was an Army captain and flight surgeon in 1991 aboard a Black Hawk helicopter shot down over Iraq. Five of the seven soldiers died. Cornum suffered two broken arms and a gunshot wound to the shoulder, was captured with two others and held for eight days.
Help me, Rhonda. Help me understand how your being sexually molested while held captive made you a better person, and that you wouldn't trade that experience for all the world.
And while you're at it, explain to me why this program shouldn't be seen as coercive, an attempt to manipulate soldiers into suppressing their emotional problems - because it's so much easier (and cheaper) for the Pentagon that way.
Her goal is to include a self-assessment on traumatic growth with a health questionnaire given to soldiers three to six months after they return from combat. She would also like to include in preparations before and after GIs are deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan short video segments of servicemembers describing how their personal lives changed for the better after surviving combat.
The new tools could be put into effect within a year, Cornum says.
Richard Tedeschi, an expert in post-traumatic growth at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, is collaborating on the project with the Army. Even though he calls the initiative "uncharted territory," Tedeschi says research indicates that soldiers have found value in their combat experiences. If informed about potential for post-traumatic growth beginning in basic training, he says, soldiers might not automatically assume "that the combat experience produces PTSD and you're kind of doomed."
During remarks at the American Enterprise Institute recently in Washington, Tedeschi said some servicemembers found the changes in their lives so profound after combat, they expressed gratitude for having gone through it — even if it cost them permanent physical damage.
"They'd felt they'd changed as people in ways they otherwise wouldn't have," Tedeschi says. "At the same time, as this trauma separates them from other people, it also allows them to maybe see themselves as more human than they ever were before, have a closer connection with what it means to be a human being ."
You know, I don't doubt this happens. After all, people have a tendency to try to integrate their experiences for growth. But there's a fine line between that voluntary process and being cajoled by the Army into pretending you don't have problems.
See, the essence of PTSD is that it's an involuntary reaction to trauma. We don't know why some people get it, and some people don't. And to imply to vulnerable soldiers that there's something weak about them if they do is despicable.
Did a stint in Iraq and one in Afghanistan.
He applied for a job at McDonalds last week. Still waiting to see if he got the job.
BTW, he is a PTSD sufferer.
Yeah. There's all sorts of bright side there.
me-oww!
Waddya doin' with these videos
My job?
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol5Dfs7jqFI
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
... (Their swiping your schtick!)
It was also the video that immediately flashed to mind when I read the caption.
Corruption favors the wealthy.
Ditto.
That and:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_12E1EN6fs
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Forgot about that one.
BTW, Perfect pick, Susie.
Corruption favors the wealthy.
Monty Python special all week on IFC....I'm watching "Life of Brian" right now!
Is one of those things that effects different people in different ways. Some people need to only witness a trauma being inflicted on another to end up with PTSD. I read one study about children who witness child abuse are more deeply effected and have worse PTSD than the child being abused.
I think there is a connection to the mirror neurons.
"I know that there are people who do not love their fellow
man, and I hate people like that! " ~ Tom Lehrer (1928 - )
PTSD is an illness! Not a result of looking at things the wrong way! How disgusting.
Fine, promote combat as a personal enhancement tool, but if you disregard a single suffering serviceperson who, despite your best intent is nonetheless mentally scarred by their combat experiences then I hope you suffer horribly what you're due.
is some form of doublespeak
not really thinking, are they?
i have been making nightly imprecatory prayers for all think tanks, but it does not seem to work; which is good because it reenforces my belief that there is no god.
There is no bright side to a world at war. It's as if they think the world will be, should always be at war - well there will be a solution to the antiquated non productive, co-dependant, destructive activity, and then killing people will actually become criminal for the first time ever. As it is now the powerful among us has the self anointed right to kill, including those less powerful among us, even in our own country - that is obscene. War will one day seem as perposterous as torture, beheading, or disfigurement is today.
International war must become a bizarre memory of a time gone by.
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
A Historic Success In Military Recruiting
When will government of the people, by the politicians, for the corporations perish from this Earth?
Not soon enough!
...they significantly lowered their goals. Compared to last year they're down a bit.
Edit: Here it is, remembered where I found it (Salon.com):
There was a story out yesterday where a man joined the army becaue he lost his job and his wife has cancer. The only way he could get care for her was by enlisting. I think his age was around 35 or maybe a few years older. Sad.
to go to just to find out those things. You could volunteer to be a crash test dummy, discover the same things and be home in time for dinner (if you lived). Something tells me a commitment to that responsibility requires a little bit more than morbid curiosity.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
This should give you all the information you need to tell you that 1 its a lie and 2 these people are insane liars! I have been saying for quite a while now.
republicanism/conservatism is a mental illness!
It proves to be more and more accurate every day. With each passing day one of these very retarded assholes shits on someone else.
But being that nearly all republicans are batshit crazy they don't even notice. It is what has kept these idiot tanks like AEI going.
They were designed of, for, and by, idiots for other idiots!
I am ashamed of the conservretards every fucking one of them!
...AEI is NOT a mental health organization, and I can tell you as a psychologist that no one in our field is recommending that people try to 'better' themselves through trauma. Rather, there seems to be factors that either increase the likelihood of long-term distress (risk factors) or reduce the likelihood of long-term distress (resiliency factors), and many of these things are difficult to sort out. So yes, some folks can go through traumatic events and come out seemingly unscathed, but this is most likely due to their background, their history, and even their biology to some degree--things that are largely beyond their control. To suggest that combat can somehow improve individuals beyond their normal capacities is at best Pollyannish, and at worst, a backhanded way to blame the victims of PTSD for their illness.
Beware of anyone promising a future full of yesterdays.
Soldiers should look at combat/war the way my six year old grandson does: "It's cool"... and of course it never hurts.
They're doing this sort of thing for any combat vets, even retirees.
Head injuries, watching your buddies die violently at a young age, accidentally killing innocent men, women and children, being away from your loved ones for years... what's not to like?
someone pressed me to tell them the "positive side" of being raped and abused. I'd spit in their face for being such an asshole.
It makes me ashamed for my country that we are doing this to the people who have served our country when the rest of us wouldn't or couldn't. It shows that the more things change, the more they stay the same. This is no better than how people acted generations ago when PTSD in combat vets was known as shell shock...
"The greatest tyranny is censoring information in order to be better able to control people." - Cristina Saralegui
From a web site:
Stephen Jay Gould was asked in an interview (by Charlie Rose?) about his stomach cancer: "Am I a better person for having suffered through and survived stomach cancer? No, I was a great person beforehand. Do I have a fuller appreciation of life? No, I appreciated it just fine before, thank you very much." (Not his actual words, but you get his drift.) In somewhat the same vein is this excerpt from a piece by the late Andre Dubus [the father, not the son], titled "Crip Sheet: Why the Able-Bodied Still Don't Get It". (Utne Reader, Sept-Oct 1997; originally published in Epoch, 1997 Series, Vol. 46, No. 1)
"I sing of those who cannot. To view human suffering as an abstraction, as a statement about how plucky we all are, is to blow air through brass while the boys and girls march in parade off to war. Seeing the flesh as only a challenge to the spirit is as false as seeing the spirit as only a challenge to the flesh. On the planet are people with whole and strong bodies, whose wounded spirits need the constant help that the quadriplegic needs for his body. What we need is not the sound of horns rising to the sky but the steady beat of the bass drum. When you march to a bass drum, your left foot touches the earth with each beat, and you can feel the drum in your body: boom and boom and boom and pity people pity people pity people."
Yessir, just think. These fine young men and women can learn all kinds of lessons from being in combat. Such as, learning to dress yourself with only one arm--or no arms at all. Learning to play sports with no legs. Read to your children with Braille books.
You get the idea.
Who would otherwise be unable to sell war. Until such time as these geniuses volunteer for post traumatic growth, you know it is pure and utter bullshit.
Always look on the bright side of death da do da do dado dado dado
During the Reagan years, a human resources consultant hired by the US Dept of Commerce to improve workforce morale, came up with a few feel-good techniques we were told to try (rather than, of course, the agency's dealing with why morale was low). They suggested that we "sparkle", "twinkle", and imagine that we were "breathing through our feet". I am not kidding. And they didn't elaborate much on just how to sparkle and twinkle; it was just a recommendation to not think too hard about what's wrong. Not that aggravations of being a federal employee under Reagan compared with dead-serious things soldiers go through in combat, but there's a parallel in that they're being told "don't worry -- be happy".
my tour in Vietnam was a bowl of cherries. We laughed and played every day and always had a smile on our faces in the field. Thank God for booze and weed.
Combat is fun and builds character. I served two tours -- my character almost burst.
{boot camp) is to make people get over their natural aversion to killing other people , and to kill on command and feel good about it .
They see PTSD as a failing of training , when in fact it is the natural response to most battle trauma .
The perfect soldier is not human
The goal here is to provide preventive care rather than palliative care. No, there is no bright side to violence or PTSD. One can, though, use the strengths gained from enduring the experience and its aftereffects, for positive growth.
Now that the Taliban is swearing that they will get all of our personnel addicted to heroin, the military should be encouraged to destress troops by any non-chemical means in order to keep them from acquiring a destructive and persistent problem.
Have some compassion here. Pollyanna isn't running this reality check.
Frikken? You gotta be fricken kiddin' me.
"By words the mind is winged." - Aristophanes
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