When the War Never Ends

The Voices of Military Members with PTSD and Their Families

By (author) Leah Wizelman

Publication date:

16 October 2011

Length of book:

176 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9781442212077

Service members returning from deployment are often suffering from PTSD. Its symptoms include distressing flashbacks, memories and nightmares, aggression, memory problems, physical symptoms, loss of positive emotions, and withdrawal from society. When the War Never Ends tells the stories of those who have lived it themselves - affected veterans and active-duty personnel, as well as their spouses, from the U.S., Canada, Australia, and Germany, who were participants in various wars and peace missions. The stories will help family members better understand their loved ones by vividly demonstrating what a trauma survivor is feeling and going through.
This book spells out the facts about post-traumatic stress disorder by mainly letting its victims and their families tell their stories. Many of the war veterans give up their hobbies and isolate themselves, many turn to alcohol, many take multiple pills (one Vietnam survivor is still on 16 medications), many are paranoid (one Iraq survivor dug foxholes in his garden and built an observation post in a tree in his yard)....Wizelman, a German biologist and PTSD researcher, explains that the condition first appeared in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1980 but actually dates back thousands of years. Homer, she says, described the symptoms in the Iliad in 4000 B.C. These moving but almost universally disheartening stories show that treatment can help but is no panacea.