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NEWS > U.S.A. > RETURNING TROOPS FINDING DEPRESSION HARDER TO KILL THAN IRAQIS
RETURNING TROOPS FINDING DEPRESSION HARDER TO KILL THAN IRAQIS
December 30 2010
Washington, D.C. – No one ever stated that war was easy or that it ever would be. War is hell, war destroys nations, families, and people. War though is something that has been one constant throughout human history. It has outlived nations, races, 
religions, and virtually all other creations of mankind despite the obvious trauma it creates in people. Not welcomed and not denied, war is a state of being for humans, it is something with which we have a profound love/hate relationship.
War though, whatever we think of it, has been one of the most significant shapers of human society. War shifts borders and changes economies, it helps build the modern world much like a fallen tree breeds new flowers. That grand vision though is something totally abstract for the people who need to live war, both the victims of the conflict and the soldiers who fight it. Over and over again the story of traumatized combatants has been told and now in the modern age with a totally modern war, soldiers are finding the transition to normal life as difficult as all their warrior brethren before. That has become especially apparent as the war in Iraq winds down with returning soldiers finding themselves at war with depression and post-traumatic stress, and enemy far more difficult to put down then enemy soldiers or women and children. 
“I didn’t know what I wanted to do or be. Our country was at war, this was my chance to be part of history. You think of all the things you’re going to do once you go back home but once I got home I had trouble coping. I began drinking and reliving firefights, me and my wife divorced,” Iraq veteran Colby Buzzell told NPR. “it wasn’t anything like you see in the movies. I genuinely thought that I could come back and everything would be fine. I felt like the person I was before I left but it wasn’t until I got home that I realized that I wasn’t.”
Buzzell was recalled to Iraq but a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSB) kept him fighting the war at home.
“Stress is without a doubt one of the biggest killers in war. I mean bullets and bombs still outdistance stress by a long shot but it is still way up there. It’s a very difficult thing that unfortunately many soldiers are forced to deal with. Unfortunately this isn’t a problem that can done away with a quick bullet to the head, well I guess it could technically, but is rather a fight that needs to be waged for a lifetime,” said Scrape TV Psychology analyst Dr. Sarah Welp. “This is something that people don’t really realize when they sign up for the military. True it has been well documented in the news, in medical papers, and even in fiction but sometimes people forego all of that evidence in favour of the glory of war. That’s human I suppose.”
Virtually all Vietnam and Iraq war movies have delved into the horror of surviving war.
“There certainly times when these patients quite understandably envy the dead. I mean that seems a little silly to the people who have suffered loss for all kinds of reasons but it is a genuine emotion. For the dead the war is over, but for individuals with PTSD it lives on forever,” continued Welp. “Unlike a whining baby or a mother weeping over he lost son, PTSD can’t be done away with by the butt of a gun and quick burial. PTSD lives forever and haunts individuals to some degree for the rest of their lives. That though makes them the true heroes. These people who put up with this blue mood for their entire lives are the real heroes of any war.”
There have been no studies into PTSD amongst Iraqis or Afghans though it is generally believed they experience war in a much different way than Americans.
Mike Michaels, American Correspondent
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