Editor's Letter: A tsunami of PTSD cases

last updated 8 January 2015

You cannot accurately calculate the cost of a decade of war. Start with $1.4 trillion spent so far, 6,390 Americans dead, 47,684 wounded, and more than 150,000 Iraqis and Afghans dead. But the statistic that’s been largely lost, until now, is that 31 percent of the more than 2 million Americans who’ve served in Iraq and Afghanistan have come home suffering from PTSD, traumatic brain injury, or both. That’s more than 600,000 soldiers. Fortunately for the society that dispatched these young men and women to two, three, or more tours in hell, the vast majority of those with PTSD are not violent; they struggle with their depression, paranoia, substance abuse, and family devastation out of the public eye. But then there are the more severe cases, like Sgt. Robert Bales, accused last week of “snapping” and murdering 16 children, women, and other civilians in Afghanistan. (See Talking points). “A tsunami of these kind of cases” is coming, warns Shad Meshad, a PTSD therapist and president of the National Veterans Foundation. Years of immersion in so much killing and ever-present danger, he says, can damage not just the mind, but the soul.

Since the year began, veterans suffering from PTSD have gone on several rampages, shooting partygoers and a female park ranger in Washington state, and stabbing to death four homeless men in California. Last week, Iraq vet Abel Gutierrez of Gilroy, Calif., killed his mother, his 11-year-old sister, and then himself. Today, only those who volunteer fight our nation’s wars; some sign up out of economic need, some out of patriotism. Now they’re coming home, carrying burdens most of us cannot imagine. Have we asked too much of them?