イラク・アフガン従軍兵士に心理的後遺症トラウマ木村愛二

イラク・アフガン従軍兵士に心理的後遺症トラウマ
http://www.asyura2.com/0505/war70/msg/918.html
投稿者木村愛二日時 2005 年 6 月 01 日 13:09:18: CjMHiEP28ibKM

ヴェトナム戦争でも、これが大変だった。

今度はイラク大量破壊兵器の嘘は露顕し、911自作自演の暴露も続き、もっと狂うだろう。

http://www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?service_ID=8658

Traumatic stress therapy for Iraq and Afghan wars vets
5/30/2005 5:00:00 PM GMT

britsh and American Iraq war vets suffer from post traumatic stress disorder.

War veterans who suffer with post-traumatic stress disorder sometimes can't describe what will trigger an episode, but they'll know it when they see it.

As such, the Pentagon has launched a three-year study on developing virtual-reality therapy for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Navy Commander Russ Shilling says the experiences of soldiers will be featured, along with those of support staff, like truck drivers. The treatment itself isn't new as it's also been used to help the survivors of the September 11th attacks.

The company coordinating the software says its Virtual Vietnam program helped veterans of that war. Ken Graap of the company Virtually Better says ignoring or trying to forget what's triggering post-traumatic stress disorder doesn't work.

“Tip of the iceberg”

A British military mental health charity said it was treating 25 veterans of the Iraq war and had received calls for help from around 100 more, but added they were just the "tip of the iceberg".

The chief executive of the charity Combat Stress, Commodore Toby Elliott, said Iraq could become as damaging a conflict for the mental health of British soldiers as was Northern Ireland in previous decades.

"Iraq is another Northern Ireland," Elliott said. "It’s prolonged exposure, going back time and again and operating in an environment where you can't tell what's going to happen next and you just don't know what the locals you're surrounded by are going to do."

It took an average of 15 years before soldiers, once discharged, sought help for post-combat stress, meaning health professionals are currently seeing the "tip of the iceberg" for Iraq veterans, he said.

In the last 18 months, the charity had treated 25 veterans of the March 2003 Iraq conflict in its clinics and received more than 100 additional calls for help, Elliott said.

A little more than half from each group were from the Territorial Army (TA), which deploys part-time soldiers in support of the professional armed forces, even though they account for only 10 percent of the total in Iraq, he said.

Elliot believes this is because they had a weaker support network once discharged. He added that many of the part-time and full-time soldiers receiving help or seeking treatment after having served in Iraq had also served in other conflicts. "They will have got Balkans experience and Northern Ireland experience as well as Iraq," Elliott said. "It's a cumulative business."

Combat Stress has a caseload of 7,000 veterans of conflicts and war, including some 3,500 considered active clients.

About 1,550 of them served in Northern Ireland, another 165 soldiers served in the Balkans, 345 served in the 1991 Gulf War and 271 had served in the 1981 Falklands conflict.

The figures reflected the conflict in which the soldier was most damaged mentally, but did not exclude other conflicts which may have also harmed him or her, Elliott said.

Leigh Skelton, director of clinical services for Combat Stress, said the TA was playing a far bigger role than it had done in recent decades.

Furthermore, Territorial Army veterans had received the same treatment while on operation as their professional counterparts but no longer had the military to fall back on once they were discharged.

"With the regular army they go back to barracks and are surrounded by people who understand what they have been through. The TA soldiers do not have that," Skelton said.

Elliott said many part-time or full-time soldiers hesitated about seeking treatment to protect their image or because they feared losing their job. Adding that it was difficult to determine how many veterans suffered combat stress because it was not clear how many people sought private care, the NHS did not provide clear figures, and there was no national veterans register.

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