Combat Trauma
A Personal Look at Long-Term Consequences
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- $31.99
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- $31.99
Publisher Description
Much has been written of the short-term experience of combat trauma. Almost nothing has been documented about how that trauma impacts individuals years after their first conflict experiences and into later life. Here, Johnson relates the stories of fifteen of his combat brothers to share with the world what their terror of four decades ago has done to them and how it affects them to this day. With candor and vivid detail, they reveal how their combat trauma symptoms still infect their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors on a daily basis. Those returning from battle now and their family and friends will find here a roadmap of what to expect from those suffering from PTSD as a result of combat. With this knowledge, today's veterans and those who love and care for them can tackle the issues and challenges so that symptoms may be minimized and addressed. Those who still carry these wounds will find that they are not alone, and that there are ways of dealing with the horror, no matter how long ago it may have been. Johnson concludes the book with resources for obtaining help and mending the spirit in the face of what can be debilitating thoughts and fears.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this incredibly courageous expose, a group of 16 Vietnam veterans look at the realities of combat trauma and their own PTSD, offering an intensely personal glimpse into what brings it on, why it isn't curable, what people can do to cope, and most importantly, how loved ones can come to terms with it. While this is by no means a clinical guide written by medical professionals, it is a strikingly honest look at an issue that is becoming more apparent in our society as combat veterans return from Iraq and Afghanistan. Readers will be drawn in immediately not to the jungles of Vietnam, but the internal hell of the men who fought there. Forty years after the fact, these men experience regular flashbacks; readers will be shocked and angered by the lack of government resources being devoted to the problem, and moved by the effects that these experiences have had on the soldiers' personal and professional lives. While a medical counterbalance might have been helpful for readers seeking a more clinical understanding of PTSD, in creating an emotional understanding, Johnson's book is a success.