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

Soldiers=Instruments for harm?

Blog 3 Nicole Saint Paul

Regardless of our age or profession we all have the tendency to obey authority. In childhood we are taught to respect our elders. We are also taught to be obedient to people with visual credibility. What I mean when I say ‘visual credibility’ is when we perceive that a person has credibility by what they are wearing. Doctors wear lab coats, lawyers wear high profiled suits, and police officers wear uniforms. The same cognition occurs when we listen to our superiors. Soldiers are taught to listen to those with a higher rank without question. This is important to realize because authority can be a harmful tool in a society where obeying is important; innocents have died as a result of strict obedience.

The 1968 My Lai Massacre was a result of the obedience to authority theory (Time). Early one morning first Lieutenant William Laws Calley Jr. ordered his men into My Lai, Viet Cong with the orders of destroying the small hamlet (Time). It took them less than 20 minutes to kill approximately 100 men, women and children along with their homes and livestock (Time). Twenty-six soldiers, including Calley (charged with murder), were investigated after the murders (Time).

Social psychology can explain why this happened. Obedience to authority is a strong power over people. Stanley Milgram, a psychologist, said, “It is ironic that the virtues of loyalty, discipline, and self-sacrifice that we value so highly in the individual are the very properties that create destructive organizational engines of war and bind men to malevolent systems of authority,” (Milgram). Milgram describes four specific reasons as to why people willingly obey authority, but admit to little or no responsibility for their negative actions. His reasons include that people obey due to the feeling that it is their duty, they find it to be difficult to disobedient, they feel that their behavior is useful to society, and they remember that they were raised in a society where obedience is important (Milgram).

Milgram conducted an experiment where he tested his theory about the effects of obedience and authority:

His hypothesis: “When an authority figure gives normal people instructions to do something that might hurt another person, some of them will obey.” This hypothesis turned out to be true. His experiment consisted of ‘teachers’- the unknowing subjects and ‘learners’-actors on a tape recorder. The ‘teachers’ were told that the study was exploring the effects of punishment (incorrect responses) on learning behaviors. They were then told that for every incorrect response they should administer an electric shock to the ‘learner’ with increasing intensity (15-450 volts). The ‘learner’/actor would be in another room and pretend he was receiving the shock, thus screaming in agonizing pain. “At 330 volts [the ‘learner’] made no response at all. Still the experiment ordered the teacher to continue asking questions and delivering shocks.” Many people got upset and agitated while administering the shocks, yet they continued. Out of 40 participants 25 went all the way to 450 volts, and anyone who continued above 330 always went to 450. (Kalat) .Sixty-three percent of the "teachers" obeyed orders to punish the learner to the very end of the 450-volt scale! No subject stopped before reaching 300 volts! (Kalat).

In conclusion even smart, tough soldiers are susceptible to the obedience-authority theory by Milgram. Milgram proves that, “Man feels responsible to the authority directing him but feels no responsibility for the content of his actions that the authority prescribes;” which explains that people feel like instruments for carry out others’ demands (Milgram). Soldiers are taught to obey their superiors and that needs to be limited. Without limits another My Lai Massacre could possible happen. Civilians do not deserve to die because of a social psychological issue. We can save many lives if the military places limits on obedience to authority; soldiers can be obedient without being naïve, unethical or inhumane. Even instruments like computers have limits, its time our soldiers do too!

Work Cited:

Kalat, James W. Introduction to Psychology. Belmont: Wadsworth Cengage Learning,

Inc., 2008. (520-522).

-Has the research on Milgram’s book below in his words.

Milgram, Stanley. Obedience to Authority. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc.,

1974.

Nation: The My Lai Massacre. Time Magazine. 28, Nov. 1969. Web. 11 Dec. 2009.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,840403,00.html

Picture: http://comps.fotosearch.com/comp/ARP/ARP108/drill-sergeant_~sergeant.jpg

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>

Bullying, Humiliation, and their Effects

Humiliation is the result from bullying. Bullying is the “repeated oppression, psychological or physical, of a less powerful person by a more powerful person” that causes people to act (“What is Bullying…”). These acts can be either positive or negative. This topic is notable because in a large scale, if the acts are negative it can lead to war, genocide and overall destruction of the parties involved.

This is evident in the results of World War I when World War II and the Holocaust occurred. The bullying countries that created the Treaty of Versailles humiliated the Germans. Germany felt reduced to almost nothing and they detested the feeling. They began to need, to hunger for counter-humiliation and Hitler was the man that provided the means and the will to do so (Lindner “Human…” 2). And as thoughts of being degraded grew, so did the thoughts of irrational acts. Those men and women became addicted to the feeling of humiliation and channeled that grave anger into revenge for their beloved Germany. In this case humiliation took a massive toll on Germany and created war and genocide. The bullied became the bullies.

Cognitive dissonance is a psychological theory that explains these events. It describes peoples’ tendency to seek consistency among their cognitive ideas and the need to change those thoughts when there is an inconsistency, or dissonance, in their behavior or visa versa (Festinger). In perspective, the Germans that did know about the killings of Jews forced their cognitions of killing as a bad act into killing as a survival act in order to compensate for the mass genocide (dissonance) (Johnson-Reuband xxii-xxxiii). Hitler was in such control over many Germans’ beliefs that he was able to persuade them to go along with killing about 23,015,000 people ranging from Jews, Gypsies, Poles, homosexuals and other non-Jews (Mattil). Cognitive dissonance was used to justify the Holocaust.

We can change this by limiting the amount of negative actions that result from bullying. This can be achieved by converting the need for counter-humiliation into the need for moderation. Moderates are those that chose to promote peace instead of aggression and war. Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela are two people that chose to be moderates in response to humility. Moderation is how humiliation can be resolved with conflict management and thus save lives from incidents like war and genocide.

We need moderate action! We need to be able to look past humiliation and try to deflect the anger and instead bring about peace. The anger caused by humiliation is like dripping food coloring into a bowl of water, before you know it the whole bowl is covered and you can’t see the difference between the color and the once clear water. And so we should be moderates; those who put the lid back on the pipette of food coloring.

Work Cited

Festinger, L. Cognitive Dissonance. Web. 30 Sept. 2009.

<http://tip.psychology.org/festinge.html>

Johnson, Eric A; Karl-Heinz Reuband. What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder & Life in

Nazi Germany: An Oral History. Cambridge, MA: Basic Books, A Member of Perseus Books Group, 2005. Web.

Lindner, E.G. “Human and the Human Condition: Mapping a Minefield.” In Human

Rights Review, 2.2, 46-63. Web. 30 Sept. 2009.

<http://www.humiliationstudies.org/documents/evelin/MappingMinefield.pdf >

Mattil, James. Flashpoints: Guide to World Conflicts. Web. 30 Sept. 2009.

<http://www.flashpoints.info/issue_briefings/Genocide/Genocide_main.htm>

“What is Bullying? Defining bullying: a new look at an old concept.”

Web. 30, Sept. 2009. <www.education.unisa.edu.au/bullying/define.html>