My Thoughts on PTSD: a #HoldOntoTheLight Post

Author's Note: While I'm talking about one of my books in this essay, I'm merely using it as an example to express certain points. Please don't feel as if you need to go out and buy my book when you read this. If you want to, then thank you, but I wanted readers to understand that the point of this essay wasn't to sell you something. My use of the book as an example was designed to highlight aspects of PTSD. 

POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER is a very real and sensitive subject, but that doesn’t mean we have to tiptoe around it. Nor does it mean we should leave it alone because we’re afraid we’ll trigger something. I’ve spoken with and served with enough vets with PTSD to know that they’d prefer to deal with it head on if they could. Which was a major reason why I made it the central theme of my very first military science-fiction novel – Grunt Life (Solaris Books). The book's characters are steeped in the realities of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder’s most notable symptoms – suicide, and depression. The publisher was worried when I turned in the manuscript. And I get that. But then again, how many authors out there have my military credentials. As a military man with thirty years of military service and combat deployments, I know about PTSD first hand, and used all of my chops to give it the respect and spotlight it needed.
 

Still, it is a heavy issue and might turn some off. Despite that, I wanted it to be a central theme to Grunt Life. Not only am I trying to make readers understand what it's like to have PTSD, but I'm also turning PTSD sufferers into heroes. Too often they think themselves the opposite. They feel broken and different. This is where I show them what their true value is, if only as a fictional construct, as active agents who are solely able to save planet Earth.

Grunt Life is a PRO-PTSD novel if nothing else.

But let’s take a look at some facts about PTSD from the U.S. Veteran's Administration:

• About 7 or 8 out of every 100 people (or 7-8% of the population) will have PTSD at some point in their lives. 

• About 5.2 million adults have PTSD during a given year. This is only a small portion of those who have gone through a trauma.

• Women are more likely than men to develop PTSD. About 10% of women develop PTSD sometime in their lives compared with 5% of men.

  

Also:

Experts think PTSD occurs:

• In about 11-20% of Veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom), or in the range of 11-20 Veterans out of 100 who served in OEF/OIF.

• In as many as 10% of Gulf War (Desert Storm) Veterans, or in 10 Gulf War Veterans out of 100.

• In about 30% of Vietnam Veterans, or about 30 out of 100 Vietnam Veterans.

My personal belief is that if you've seen something you can't unsee or if you've been in an accident or a combat zone that you have PTSD period. For many of us it doesn't manifest in a major way. But I still flinch when my screen saver comes on and a dozen small other contrivances every day.

Many PTSD sufferers, like the characters in my book Grunt Life, can see no way clear of their disorder and often take their own lives. This excerpt from Forbes Magazine is sobering. "Almost once an hour – every 65 minutes to be precise – a military veteran commits suicide, says a new investigation by the Department of Veterans Affairs. By far the most extensive study of veteran suicides ever conducted, the report, issued Friday, examined suicide data from 1999 to 2010."

The data in the Forbes Magazine article was then compared with a previous investigation – primarily an estimation – that had been conducted over the same time period, and had found a suicide rate of eighteen per day. Many of these suicides involve older veterans; 69 percent of the suicides recorded were by veterans age fifty and older. But another way to look at this is that 31 percent of these suicides were by veterans forty-nine and younger. In other words, by men in the prime of life.

And then there are the shockingly common active duty suicides. Just two weeks ago, the military released data showing that suicides among those on active duty hit a record high in 2012. There were 349 suicides among active duty personnel – almost one a day. That means there are now more suicides among active duty soldiers than there are combat deaths.

I want to make it clear that Grunt Life is a work of fiction. I chose to have PTSD as a central theme because I see so many war-themed books out there who won't touch it. Those that do tend to use a PTSD sufferer as a bad guy, shooting people, out of control, and nothing more than a cardboard character you’re supposed to hate. But there have been other books about PTSD and you probably didn’t even know it. Tolkein’s characters literally ring with the ramifications of their actions and what they have seen and done. The societal breakdown in Lord of the Flies is PTSD manifest, the ultimate desensitization and dehumanization of humans. Heinlein’s Glory Road, for all of its fantastical interstellar swashbuckling, is at heart the story of a PTSD sufferer returning from combat in a Southeast Asian country.

While the messages in these novels were more subtle, I’m using the sledgehammer approach in Grunt Life. There is no doubt that the characters have PTSD, which is why Solaris called the book the darkest science fiction book in the history of their publishing house. If my only success is to bring more attention to it, then good. But I think I’ve achieved more.

The popular website Pop Cults focused heavily into the PTSD aspects with an absolutely glowing review of Grunt Life. They actually got what I was trying to do, which means it worked.
 

 'With Grunt Life, I feel like Ochse was striving to write the kind of military narrative that Heinlein or Haldeman would have written. I am a huge fan of both authors, and Ochse is well on his way to joining their ranks, but I don’t think he is quite there. He is close, and he is on the right track — heck, he even acknowledges Haldeman at the end of the book. Ochse goes beyond the normal chaos of combat and asks the tough questions that we, as a greater society, are just starting to ask. In this novel, he addresses one of the biggest killers of our veterans these days: suicide. While the taking of one’s life has been addressed before, Ochse embraces it and integrates it into his story without making it the focus of the book or glorifying it. The book starts out with a suicide attempt, but it isn’t for the reasons that you would expect. Ochse was willing to get past the Hollywood and mainstream media explanations of military suicide and try to address some of the real reasons why veterans would be willing to end their lives. This is a subject that needs to be addressed openly and honestly, and Ochse was brave enough to risk turning some readers off to do it. I think that many of the readers who do get turned off by his frank observations on this subject might feel that way because it hits way too close to home. I don’t want this to sound like a challenge, but for some folks out there, this might be the book that makes them stop and think.'

 My colleague in both writing and the military, the inestimable Myke Cole says that “PTSD is not a disease it’s a world view. War, disaster response, police work, these things force a person to live in the spaces where trauma happens, to spend most of their time there, until that world becomes yours, seeps through your skin and runs in your blood… PTSD is what happens when all that is stripped away. It is the curtain pulled back, the deep and thematic realization that life is fungible, that death is capricious and sudden. That anyone’s life can be snuffed out or worse, ruined, in the space of a few seconds. It is the shaking realization that love cannot protect you, and even worse, that you cannot protect those you love. It is the final surrendering of the myth that, if you are decent enough, ethical enough, skilled enough, you’ll be spared.”

It used to be, for the most part, that you had to be in a particular line of work to earn this world view. For one to get PTSD you had to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s not necessarily the case anymore. The internet has democratized PTSD opportunities, allowing viewers to watch beheadings, terrorists burning victims alive, people being shot, run over, and falling to their deaths. The very act of witnessing these things puts a person in that space that Myke describes when one realizes that life is fungible. Some are able to take it better than others. Because I’ve seen enough death in my own life, I don’t watch these. I’ve never watched a beheading and never will.

But many people do.

Can you imagine what it does to them?

Have you watched these videos?

How did it make you feel?

Hs it changed you?

Would you even know if it did?

It’s also important to understand that the military isn't the only high percentage group with PTSD sufferers. Police and fire fighters, as well as rape victims and victims of sexual abuse have a very high rate of PTSD as well. Nurses, doctors and paramedics have a high incidence of PTSD. You could literally spend your day interacting with PTSD sufferers and not even know it.

So at the very least, treat everyone with respect.

If you write about PTSD, do it in a positive and constructive manner.

And that woman in the middle of road rage or the guy not moving fast enough for you in the line you're queued up in, they might be having a hard time of it, so maybe think about treating them that way.

You don’t know what they’ve seen.

You don’t know what they’ve done.

We all need to learn to live on this planet together.

About the campaign:

#HoldOntoTheLight is a blog campaign encompassing blog posts by fantasy and science fiction authors around the world in an effort to raise awareness around treatment for depression, suicide prevention, domestic violence intervention, PTSD initiatives, bullying prevention and other mental health-related issues. We believe fandom should be supportive, welcoming and inclusive, in the long tradition of fandom taking care of its own. We encourage readers and fans to seek the help they or their loved ones need without shame or embarrassment. 

Please consider donating to or volunteering for organizations dedicated to treatment and prevention such as: American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Home for the Warriors (PTSD), National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), Canadian Mental Health Association, MIND (UK), SANE (UK), BeyondBlue (Australia), To Write Love On Her Arms and the National Suicide Prevention Hotline.