Now that modern militaries accept that war creates psychological trauma, therapists wonder about its toll on the spirit.
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Diane Silver
Miller – McCune
John Fisher got his soul back when he visited a cemetery in Greece.
Shelley Corteville felt “rocketed” into healing when she told her story at a veterans’ retreat after 28 years of silence.
Bob Cagle lost his decades-long urge to commit suicide after an encounter at a Buddhist temple.
These veterans and thousands like them grapple with what some call “the war after the war” — the psychological scars of conflict. Working with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and private organizations, these men and women are employing treatments both radically new and centuries old. At the center of their journey is a new way of thinking that redefines some traumas as moral injuries.
The psychological toll taken by war is obvious. For the second year in a row, more active-duty troops committed suicide in 2010 (468) than were killed in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan (462). A 2008 RAND Corporation study reported that nearly 1 in 5 troops who had returned from Iraq and Afghanistan reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress or major depression.
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