Hard Question

I spoke at a Veterans for Peace conference this past Saturday. My talk was about PTSD and how it is as much a society disorder as it is an individual disorder. Most of the folks in the audience were hard core fighters for peace, sprinkled in were a few vets for peace. Many of these folk seemed to have a bit of a hard time finding compassion for vets. a Comment that was made in the question answer session at the end was, "Why should I thank the vets for what they did, when I did not send the to war? I did not vote for the politicians that sent them."
I must admit this was not an easy question to address. What I said was, you are a member of the society that sent these men and women to war. You may not have voted for those who sent them but this does not excuse you from the responsibility for there care and healing when they come home. If history repeats its self returning vets have shown up in high number in the homeless population, in the addicted population, in our homes with incident of domestic violence. You and I as members of this society are paying with our dollars for this social unrest. We may not have voted to have a crack addict rob our home but it happens.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or Post Traumatic Society Diorder

PTSD Workshop

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or Post Traumatic Society Disorder

We have given our veterans behavior a name, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD. In 1980 PTSD became a diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or DSM II at that time. This was seen by many health care professionals as making great strides for combat veterans now they were eligible for the treatment they had urgently needed since the ending of the War five years earlier. Finally effects of war trauma on soldiers which had been previously called “Shell Shock,” or “Solders Heart,” became legitimized and the VA was held responsible to treat this disorder.

I believe what was unseen at the time is that by declaring PTSD an illness of the individual and placing it in the mental health manual for the treatment of individual illnesses, we affectively isolated the problem into the category of a personal treatment. This places the onus of healing on the patient and the patient’s treatment team.

I will be presenting the above material on PTSD at the

The 9th annual Kateri Tekakwitha Peace Conference

"Hope and Resistance - Transforming the Course of History" will be held on Friday evening, August 17 and Saturday, August 18, 2007. Please join us in this Interfaith conference, featuring Stephen Eric Bronner and Fr. Louis Vitale OFM at the National Kateri Tekakwitha Shrine in Fonda, NY. All are welcome!

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or Post Trauma Society Disorder?:
A Deeper look at PTSD By Larry Winters
Location: Dinning Hall

PTSD is a diagnostic term that comes out of the DSM-!V, a mental health manual. It stands for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I propose that PTSD should stand for Post Trauma Society Disorder.

This workshop will look at our returning soldiers and the obligation our society holds in healing these men and women. In fact this obligation goes well beyond parades, VA hospitals, and military metals. If we as a society don't reach down into our souls, we will never understand our returning men and women with PTSD nor the continuing disorder in their lives. PTSD is also seen as infectious adversely effecting our families, community, and nation. Until we fully accept our societal responsibility neither our returning military personnel nor our nation will have peace.

Questions we will ask in this workshop:

• What do these men and women soldiers need?
• How can we learn to listen to pain we'd rather turn off?
• What do we do with the pain they will deliver to us?
• What does honor really mean?
• How do we accept the life and death reality of what our soldiers have done and must live with?
• How do we remove politics from our souls and see our soldiers as human beings?
• What does it mean to have a warrior in our house, at our work place, and in our communities?

Larry Winters was born and raised in New Paltz, NY. Larry entered the United States Marine Corps after high school and served in Vietnam 1969-1970. Twenty-five years later, as a licensed mental health counselor at Four Winds Hospital in Katonah, NY, Larry Winters returned to Vietnam with other heath care professionals to study Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in the Vietnamese people and to make peace with his past. Larry is a widely published poet, men's group leader and group psychotherapist. He has recently published his book titled "The Making and Un-making of a Marine". If you wish to know more about Larry or his book feel free to email him or check out his blog at:
Email: winters.lawrence@gmail.com
Blog: makingandunmaking.blogspot.com

Post Traumatic Society Disorder

Yesterday I did a radio inter view with Dr. Harris Stratyner renown substance abuse expert on his show called, "Here's to your good health." Harris asked me about PTSD and other vet topics. I began to express to him an idea that I am working on, which is that PTSD which stands for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder may also have a second meaning Post Traumatic Society Disorder. The premise of this idea is that PTSD is a diagnosis which in 1980 was placed in the DSM manual of mental health diagnosis. This was great for vets coming home from war to get treated by the VA. The down side of this is that it put the onus of responsibly for the treatment of PTSD on the individual, and the health care system. What I am learning is that the responsibility for healing PTSD belongs much more on the society that has sent its people to war, than on those who suffer the effects of war. Therefore I think that Post Traumatic Society Disorder may hold more truth and certainly places the responsibility squarely where it belongs.

Comments welcome:

Larry

The War Tapes

Blog July 28, 2007

Last night I watched a documentary titled The War Tapes directed Deborah Scraton and produced by Robert May. This film was shot by Army soldiers in Iraq. Several men from the National Guard were given video cameras for their year in Iraq. The film flipped back and forth between the war zone and the States. What it did for me was put faces on the war and the landscape. More was said in the jokes and facial gestures then in the dialog. Several of the story lines were classic, young men needing to prove there worth; standing up for a cause they felt noble. Then the reality of death and fear set in and we get to watch how war hardens the human charter. We see the desire for these men wanting to initiating into manhood, and how becoming a hero seduces them into trauma and pain that will infect there souls for a life time. I recommend this film, you see more of the story in the actions and behaviors of these men then they tell you.

As a Vietnam vet the familiarly of the bravado, fear, and denial drew up a deep sadness in me. Where I believe the story holds its deepest truth is in the women that these men have left behind, the wife’s mothers. It was said several times by these women that their men had changed when they came home. We as viewers saw this as well.

No Roads Lead To Nome

I have had some time to reflect about the Nome Alaska trip. As I have mentioned before I went to Nome to teach native Alaskans group therapy, which I did. What I didn’t realize would happen is that I got inoculated with a many new ideas as they did. In other words I went to teach and I got taught. Some of the things I’ve been thinking about are how close to the land these folk have lived for ten thousand years. And it has only been three generations that the white man has brought his germs and religion to these folks. This means that the old stories have not completely sunken out of their unconscious. Many native folks are afraid of the shamanic ways of their ancestors. They have been raised by parents who were taught by white missionaries and have become devout believers themselves. But the old stories they were told as children also live inside them yet. What I experienced in the workshop was that some folks seemed stretched between current history and the hidden past.

The shamanic way has as it central theme nature and the need for human beings to have the highest spiritual reverence for it, all of this is driven by survival, will we eat, will we be warm, will be survive the storm. What is becoming apparent is our modern culture has lost this wisdom we worry very little about our basic needs. Although what keep hearing in the news is issues about global warming, drought, food shortages, and war, all which threaten our survival.

As our environment deteriorates and food and clean water become less available the need for reverence needs to return to us at a soul level. As we look into our world for those who hold this wisdom, those stewards in this forgotten realm, it is obvious that the native peoples are closest to this understanding. The very people we deem as primitive. If you’re thinking it’s the skills we need, you’re off base; we can easily recapture the skill and even improve on them. It’s the spiritual way of being they still have access to, the ability to honor nature and not be as ego driven as we are. This is what the native people still have a faint hold on.

The Way of the Human Beings

Before I left for Alaska I was given a book to read by Ed Tick the author of War and the Soul. I was going to work with Native Alaskans who were dealing with the epidemic of alcohol and suicide. The title of the book Ed gave me is The Way of the Human Beings by Harold Napoleon. What a gift this was. Having read the book I was able to understand what the Native Alaskans are dealing with. Harold writes about the “Great death” which was as series of epidemic brought by the white man during the nineteen hundreds. Harold uses the experience of the Vietnam veteran who came home with PTSD as a parallel to what happened to the Native Alaskans. Natives were left on the fringes of society jus tas the Vietnam veterans were. Natives were traumatized by the loss of so many people and are still struggling to recover the profound loss of elders. Just as the Vietnam vets with PTSD have often choose addiction, and suicide, so did the Native Alaskans.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in PTSD, in either population.

Larry

Vet's In Alaska

I am getting ready to leave Noam Alaska after ten days of teaching and learning. The first four days I taught a group of Native Alaskan heath care workers about Directive Group Therapy, a form of group psychotherapy that I have developed working at Four Winds Hospital for the past twenty years. Many of these folks came from surrounding Native villages where they provide the primary care for the residences. There is and epidemic of alcoholism and suicide in all of these villages.

The remainder of the time my wife Helise and I spent visiting Native villages and enjoying the fantastic landscape. Each place I sought out veterans to speak with. I am hoping to put together a vets gathering here in Noam next year with the help of my friend Greg Smith who works for Norton Sound Health Corporation. Greg was an invaluable contact person who set up my coming to Noam.

Yesterday Greg and I flew in a bush plane out to the small village of Golovin. There are a hundred and fifty folks in the village and around ten vets. A man named Duane or “Bear” who was part of my workshop in Noam lives in Golovin and he introduced me to a vet named Tom who was in Vietnam 1967-68. Tom and I spent several hours talking about life on Golovin and our experience in Vietnam. I will be telling you about Tom in the blog after I get home and settled.