How The Purple Heart Can Help Heal Veterans with PTSD

[Must-read article with accompanying articles that sum up the importance of how to respond/'treat' trauma.]

"Granting the Purple Heart is just the first step in fully legitimizing and addressing PTSD. We also need systemic reform of the VA and a better system for providing the long term clinical treatment that its casualties deserve. But awarding the medal in cases of PTSD will accomplish one essential goal: giving the respect and acknowledgement to those who are suffering from invisible wounds that we already bestow on those with scars we can see. By doing this, we would acknowledge that the anxiety, rage, depression and disrupted emotional and social lives that veterans with PTSD experience are a result of war, and not some personal defect. By honoring them like we honor those scarred by bullets and IEDs we may be able to alleviate some of the shame and fear that have led so many to suicide."

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/23/how-the-purple-heart-can-help-heal-veterans-with-ptsd.html

[The important aspect of appropriate treatment is how those traumatized are handled socially/medically right after the trauma. Remember the Vietnam War veterans and how horribly they were treated.]

Must-reads to have the posted article above make sense:

A New Focus on the ‘Post’ in Post-Traumatic Stress

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/25/science/understanding-the-effects-of-social-environment-on-trauma-victims.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&

Trauma – The Importance of the Post-Trauma Environment

http://blogs.plos.org/neuroanthropology/2012/12/27/trauma-the-importance-of-the-post-trauma-environment/