Crisis and chaos : life with the combat veteran : the stories of families living and coping with postraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder is marked by symptoms following exposure to extreme trauma. For loved ones of combat veterans unable to shake the grip of war, the homefront is indeed a battlefield. For many families, the memories of the departure, and all the plans and hopes for tomorrow, are shattered when the loved one returns. He comes home, but he's different. He returns from that faraway place, but yet a part of him seems to be there still, thousands of miles away. For centuries societies have shipped their youth off to war, fully expecting them to return home the same, to pick up where they left off, to carry on and to "fit in". Though this extraordinary book focuses on the uniqueness of war and PTSD, the disorder is also associated with other large-scale traumas like natural disasters and personal traumas like rape, sexual abuse and domestic violence. Although the severity of the veteran's trauma, and therefore the effects of that trauma vary from home to home, certainly one principle universally applies: Young people who see or participate in the atrocities of combat do not come out of the experience unscathed. This unique book brings their plight home.