Military veterans are our nation’s modern-day heroes. Yet many find themselves struggling with their mental health when they come back home. Among the mental health challenges facing our military, PTSD in veterans is one of the most notable. If left untreated, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can make a debilitating impact on both veterans and the general population. But with the right treatment, especially the kind that focuses on the unique needs of the military, many veterans are finding freedom from their traumatized pasts.
Understanding Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
According to the American Psychiatric Association (APA), post-traumatic stress disorder is a psychiatric condition that can develop after witnessing a traumatic event or a series of traumatic events. These events are often perceived by the person experiencing them as life-threatening or harmful emotionally or physically. Examples of traumatizing events that can cause PTSD include:
- Natural disasters
- Acts of terrorism
- Emotional, physical, or sexual abuse or assault
- War or combat
- Serious accidents
- Medical illness
- Childbirth
- Bullying
- Intimate partner violence
It’s normal for anyone to feel traumatized from the kinds of life-threatening events above. Any resulting traumatic effects (which are essentially symptoms of PTSD) are typically short-term. When they persist however, they can lead to the development of PTSD. According to the APA, you may be officially diagnosed with PTSD if your traumatic effects last for more than a month and significantly interfere with your daily functioning. Usually, PTSD symptoms will develop within three months of the traumatic experience. But in some cases, they can arise much later and last for years.
PTSD in Veterans: A Growing Concern
Struggling with PTSD can happen to anyone who’s been through a devastating, traumatic event. About 4.1% of adults in the United States (8 million people total) have PTSD, shares the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). But considering the types of life-threatening events that can lead to PTSD, such as war and combat, the disorder is slightly more common in military veterans than civilians.
According to the US Department of Veterans Affairs, 7 out of every 100 veterans (or 7%) will have PTSD at some point in their lives. Among those, PTSD is 3 times more likely for veterans who deployed versus those who did not. Further studies have shown PTSD prevalence among veterans of specific wars:
- Veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Gulf Freedom: 29% had PTSD at some point in life
- Persian Gulf War (Desert Storm): 21% had PTSD at some point in life
- Vietnam War: 10% had PTSD at some point in life
- World War II and Korean War: 3% had PTSD at some point in life
Compared to previous conflicts, the prevalence of PTSD in veterans has noticeably increased. But beyond the military, other groups of people among the general population have experienced an increase in PTSD diagnoses as well. According to a study by JAMA Network, PTSD increased among college students by 4% from 2017 to 2022, for example. Health Affairs has also found that perinatal PTSD diagnoses increased dramatically over a 12 year period from 2008 to 2020.
How Trauma Affects the Brain
To understand PTSD’s impact, especially among veterans’ mental health, you need to understand how trauma affects the brain. Trauma and the brain are very much responsible for the development of PTSD in someone, after all. When a traumatic event happens to you, the brain responsible for survival instincts and autonomic body processes takes control. As you react and go into survival mode, your body will trigger a fight, flight, freeze response.
Once the traumatic event subsides, your brain typically reverts back to its normal state and reduces your stress response. But when you’re experiencing various forms of PTSD, your brain doesn’t return back to its normal state. You remain in a constant survival mode. Behind the scenes, trauma can actually create biological changes in your brain, shares Boston Clinical Trials. Your amygdala, which detects threats, can get caught up in an activated loop of looking for threats everywhere. As your stress hormones remain elevated, your body’s ability to regulate itself is interfered with and your sympathetic nervous system stays highly activated.
Based on the way your brain works, you can also become traumatized from others’ traumatic experiences. When someone has PTSD especially, the people who are exposed to that person’s trauma can experience secondary trauma themselves. Secondary trauma can come from exposure to just one traumatic incident through someone else, shares Rasmussen University. This leaves family members and loved ones of military veterans especially vulnerable.
Signs and Symptoms of PTSD
So what happens when PTSD is triggered? While anyone who’s been traumatized can struggle with negative effects, PTSD has some typical symptoms that separate it from other conditions. One of the hallmark symptoms of PTSD is experiencing flashbacks. But what is a flashback, exactly? A flashback is essentially reliving the traumatic event over again in your mind. It’s often a vivid memory, full of sensory images, sounds, and feelings, that makes you feel like the traumatic experience is occurring in the moment.
Beyond flashbacks, you may also relive your traumatic experience in other ways. At the same time, PTSD generates other typical symptoms, too, including:
- Hypervigilance or being on guard for danger constantly
- Irritability and aggressive behavior
- Difficulty remembering
- Startling easily
- Nightmares
- Emotional numbness
- Negative thoughts or feelings about society, other people, and yourself
- Avoiding anything associated with your past trauma
- Isolation and emotional detachment from others
- Distress or strong reactions to reminders of your trauma
As the awareness of PTSD and its symptoms has grown, we’ve become better as a society at recognizing PTSD when it happens. Rewinding about 100 years ago, “shell shock” and “battle fatigue” were common descriptors of war trauma associated with military veterans. However, a formal diagnosis of PTSD was introduced in 1980 in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). And with increasing research, PTSD was recently moved to its own category within the DSM, rather than being included as a type of anxiety disorder, according to NAMI.
Veteran Support Services and the Struggle to Get Help
Even with a widespread clinical awareness of PTSD and its treatment needs, today’s veterans struggle to get help for it. In fact, according to RAND, only about half of all veterans who need mental health care ever receive it. But why?
Like other general health care challenges, it’s a combination of many issues. Shortages in providers of mental health care for veterans prevent those with PTSD from getting the help they need in a timely manner. Some providers are also not trained in evidence-based practices, so veterans don’t receive quality trauma-informed care if they finally do get an appointment.
Mental health and addiction stigma also hinder veterans from seeking professional help. Just as in society as a whole, there’s often a pervasive belief among the military that getting help is a sign of weakness. And with mental health struggles viewed unfavorably in our culture at large, some may also fear disclosing their PTSD and risking their employment or future job eligibility.
As veterans put off any professional help for PTSD, their mental health struggles can worsen. In their attempts to self-medicate their symptoms, they could end up dealing with both PTSD and substance abuse. In fact, addiction and PTSD are common co-occurring disorders. According to the US Department of Veterans Affairs, about 40% of adults with PTSD will also have drug or alcohol issues. Experiencing both struggles at the same time makes getting proper treatment all the more challenging.
Mental Health Care for Veterans: Rally Point Program at Defining Wellness
Just as veterans engage in unique duties to protect our freedoms, they also bring unique mental health treatment needs that may differ from civilians. Having survived traumatic events such as being attacked or seeing others killed, veterans can experience a range of struggles. In addition to PTSD, they may have thoughts of suicide or death. Some may have trouble sleeping. Veterans and substance abuse are often a common pairing. Others may have a hard time adjusting to civilian life, experience family strains, or have depression. Traumatic brain injuries are also more common, according to RAND.
Because veterans face unique mental health challenges, the approach used to treat them needs to be more personalized to their struggles. We understand this at Defining Wellness Centers in Mississippi, which is why we created our Rally Point program. Designed to address the specific needs of military veterans, Rally Point (previously Wellness for Warriors) integrates holistic and evidence-based therapies to empower our nation’s heroes to reclaim their lives and thrive – the program also accepts military-specific insurance such as VA Community Care and Tricare. This transformative journey includes:
- Community and 1:1 veteran-led peer support
- Traditional and alternative modalities like trauma-informed care, mindfulness, and recreational activities
- Veteran-specific housing and accommodations
- Educational workshops, vocational training, and counseling
- A tranquil, serene setting in Brandon, Mississippi
Our dual diagnosis treatment program also equips us to address veterans’ addiction and mental health challenges simultaneously. That means you can heal from both PTSD and substance abuse all in one place. If you’re ready to embrace both lasting recovery and a brighter future, call us today to learn more about our treatment programs.