Suicide, PTSD, War

Blog

November 3^rd, 2009

Soldiers are great men and women who are looked up to by their fellow countrymen. They intentionally place their lives in danger in order to protect our national security, and lives. But with heroism comes consequences. Many soldiers come back home from war with an enormous amount of eagerness to restart their lives, but PTSD can disrupt that. The biggest problem with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is not that it can be a burden; it’s the fact that it can easily lead to suicide. This is a disorder that negatively affects individual soldiers, their families and the army as a whole.

The Vietnam War was a hard one for many soldiers. The veterans from this war, like many other wars, felt the dampening effects of PTSD. The PSTD came along with the feeling of guilt about combat actions, survivor guilt, depression, and anxiety (Hendin, Haas). Since the Vietnam War the suicide toll has been rising. “At least 128 soldiers killed themselves last year [2008], and the Army suicide rate surpassed that for civilians for the first time since the Vietnam War, according to Army statistics” (Alvarez).

Cognitive theories, more specifically Jacques Derrida’s cognitive deconstruction, explains the thinking behind why suicide is an option. It explains how within people’s minds they feel the need to exit themselves and the world. Within this state of mind people feel both irrational and uninhibited; making drastic measures seem acceptable (Baumeister). Soldiers will feel this strongly when they are faced with PTSD.

Data to support this: above

In conclusion when going to war there are dire consequences that can occur within a soldier’s mind. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is becoming a common occurrence within veterans. One side effect that can occur with PTSD is suicide. In order to safe the lives that soldiers are taking from themselves we need to focus on how to eliminate PTSD and the internal cognitive deconstruction. By using the many minds of psychologists we can save lives of soldiers that fight for your freedomsg.

Blog 5 work cited

Baumeister, Roy F. “Suicide as Escape From Self.” Psychological Review. Vol 97(1),

Jan (1990), 90-113. November 2, 2009. Web.

http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&id=1990-14898-001&CFID=3214520&CFTOKEN=55685281

Hendin, H.; Haas, AP. “Suicide and Guilt as Manifest of PTSD Vietnam Combat

Veterans.” The American journal of Psychiatry 148 (1991). 586-591.Web. November 2, 2009.Web.

http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/148/5/586

Alverez, Lizette. “Suicides of Soldiers Reach High of Nearly 3 Decades.” The New York

Times. 29 Jan. 2009.Web. November 2, 2009.

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/01/30/us/30suicide_190chart.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.nytimes.com/

2009/01/30/us/30suicide.html&usg=__o2Qqx_37JQCk1_9OuqCMALlfGTI=&h=315&w=190&sz=20&hl=en&start=30&sig2=u

nlPtwBidewFyLY8YPuePA&um=1&tbnid=b8KB5MibeENf_M:&tbnh=117&tbnw=71&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dvietnam%2Bwar%2Bsuicide%26ndsp%3D18%26hl%3Den%26rlz%3D1T4ADRA_enUS344US345%26sa%3DN%26start%3D18%26um%3D1&ei=Bb_vSp6QPIOWtgeatdjwBw

The elderly limit the resources for the young

BLOG 2

Not many people want to die. Society, as a whole, tends to have this great overbearing need to live as long as possible. And if this means keeping someone alive as long as possible, regardless of the amount of resources, then so be it. This is normal and understandable since life is essential to living, but it isn’t logical. Society allows people to live longer in their elderly stages of deterioration. This topic is notable because older people are living longer; thus causing the younger side of society to suffer with the lack of resources.

Resources are limited; therefore once they are used they are gone. Doctors will spend a lot of time trying to treat or cure many diseases that mainly occur in elderly people. This will limit the amount of time, people, and resources spent of diseases that will help younger people, who still have a long life ahead of them. This is where it gets controversial: how can anyone just “LET” someone die whether they are old or young? The answer is to treat it like any other issue and way out the pros and cons. Pros: elderly man/woman lives a few more months. Cons: resources are depleted; therefore they cannot be used to save someone like a child.

History proves that Japan had a rapid increase in their life expectancy rate after World War II. Japan increased by a mean of 13.7 years. Males went up 13.5 years (from 50.1 to 63.6 years) and Females went up 13.8 years (from 54.0 to 67.8 years) between 1947 and 1955 (Sugiura). In one perspective this can be seen as great. Everyone wants to live longer. But in another perspective it is a negative attribution to society. With more people living longer comes the need to feed, and provide for them. Eventually the society will not be able to sustain them all and poverty will become the way of life. Life is meant to end; it is inevitable regardless of our desires. Prolonging the inevitable only brings pain and suffering to all.

TMT, or Terror Management Theory, explains the need and ability to keep people alive regardless of its negative effects on resources. TMT is the need of self-esteem and faith in a cultural worldview to protect our psychological structures from anxiety that results from the awareness that death is inevitable in order to promote self-preservation (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, Solomon). Those three men researched an extension of TMT called the dual-processed theory. This consists of proximal and distal distinct defense systems that deal with conscious and unconscious aspects of the problem of death. The proximal system defends against conscious thoughts and “entails of either active suppression of such thoughts or cognitive distortions that push the problem of death into the distant future in a seemingly rational manner.” The distal system defends against unconscious thoughts of death, “but defend against death by enabling the individual to construe himself or herself as a valuable participant in a meaningful universe,” (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, Solomon). Viewing the deaths of loved ones is something that is humanly difficult. It causes reality of the inevitability of death to set in. These thoughts bring about anxiety and fear, which is something that as human beings we are “programmed” to avoid.

The longer we try to erase the line between life and death, the longer we waste precious, valuable resources on something that is inevitable. The need to keep anxieties silenced, faith alive and death off of our minds is becoming a greater burden than what is best for our future. We take resources for granted and before we know it we wont have that luxury. It has been estimated that people use more Medicare in their final years of life, about 27% of Medicare’s $327 billion annual budget, than in any other time (Appleby). This data means that we are wasting valuable money (resources) on the elderly who will inevitable die do to age. Instead we could be using that money (resources) to cure cancer, eliminate children diseases, and create hope for people who can live a full life like the old man/woman had.

In conclusion, our medical wars come down to the fact that we need life, but we need resources more. Older people have had a long life. Young people deserve it too. We need to spend our resources wisely so that they last. Saving deteriorating people for a few more months at the expense of millions just isn’t worth it when we can redirect that money and create something to help a 9 year old walk and live a life. We can save a life-a long life- if we redirect most of our resources away from old people and toward younger people eager to live a life.

Work Cited

Appleby, Julie. “Debate surrounds end-of-life heath care costs.” USA Today. 10 Oct.

2006. Web. 6 Oct. 2009. <http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/2006-10-18-end-of-life-costs_x.htm>

Pyszczynski, Tom; Jeff Greenberg; Sheldon Solomon. “A Dual-Process Model of

Defense Against Conscious and Unconscious Death-Related Thoughts An Extension of Terror Management Theory.” New York Psychological Review. Vol. 106, No. 4, 835-845. Web. 6 Oct. 2009. http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/peterson/psy430s2001/Pyszczynski%20T%20Dual%20process%20model.%20Psych%20Rev%201999.pdf

Sugiura, Yasuo; Ju, Young-Su; yasuoka, Junko; Jimba, Masamine. “Rapid Increase in

Japanese Life Expectancy After World War II.” 17 Sept. 2007. Web. 6 Oct. 2009.

<http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/takemi/files/RP245.pdf>