It’s almost Veterans Day 2007 and almost five years since the start of the Iraq war. 30,000 Massachusetts military service members are back from the war, but many are fighting something else at home: mental illness. We’ll talk with some veterans, doctors and a reporter who’s been covering the war from overseas and here at home. He describes this situation for returning vets "a mental health crisis." What do you think? Is the nation prepared for the soliders returning ? Do you know a veteran? Remember our veterans by sharing your stories with us.
Listen to the full show:
listen
Plus, in our web specials: Remembering Bobby’s War, a deeper look at PTSD, and links to veterans’ resources…
Radio Boston: Coming Home From War
Air Date: November 9, 2007
Guests:
Charles Sennott, reporter and special correspondent for the Boston Globe
Dr. Terry Keane, psychiatrist with Boston Veterans Affairs, and director of the Behavioral Science Division of the National Center for PTSD
Web Specials…
We’ve put together a list of links to resources and services available for veterans.
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Charles Sennott of the Boston Globe spent a full year following one group of Massachusetts soldiers. He watched them train, embedded with them in Iraq, and found out how each one of them brought the war home. Journey with them in the Globe’s online special.
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David Boeri writes: There are the statistics. Then there are the stories. And the one that staggers me is the story of someone I call my cousin. Bobby Fairbairn served two tours in Vietnam at its very worst in the late Sixties. His father grew up in my father’s family and when we went to visit him in the months after he returned, we knew he was in bad shape. He never left his room. He was back, but he wasn’t home…
David Page
This message came in by email from David Page:
I wrote this some years ago for my friends who went to
Vietnam:
War changes a man too quickly.
In war the hard lesson of life, which should come one at a time and slowly, are squeezed into months, or even days, without benefit of maturity and with none of life’s softening joys. For the soldier in
battle the world can seem a harsh place indeed.
In war a soldier thinks mostly about two things, staying alive and getting home. If he manages to survive the battlefield he has then to face the hardest lesson of all,
for the home a soldier dreams of is not a place but a time, and he can never go home again.
Another message from the Radio Boston email inbox:
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Name: Lynne Weiss
Subject: PTSD AND FAMILIES
Message: It seems to me that more parents (male & female) are going
into this war than into Vietnam, because of heavy reliance on
reserves/natl guard.
How will being raised by parents with PTSD affect a generation of
children? I hope someone is thinking about this–I don’t have much
hope that there is money to provide treatment given the lack of
funding for veterans.