Post-traumatic stress disorder is a lot more common in war veterans than most people realize. This disorder causes veterans to act out irrationally and doesn’t allow them to be there normal self. PTSD in war veterans has highly increased in the last few years and has been more heard of. Soldiers aren’t given the best care when diagnosed with PTSD and often feel as if it’s not taken seriously by society.  By looking at the way society views soldiers in terms of the accounts described in The Things They Carried, we can see that society puts soldiers on a pedestal when they leave for war. This is important because their humanities are overlooked and they feel that they are misunderstood which results to government policies that mistreat war veterans.

In “The Things They Carried” the soldiers carried things that were considered a necessity to them like photographs, candy, cigarettes, guns and bibles. It was important for them to carry these items because it gave them a way to cope with situations and gave them special memories with their loved ones. One thing that stood out to me was that one soldier carried dope, which he considered his necessity. I feel like this is important because many soldiers don’t know how to cope with the environment and how they are feeling while they are at war, so they turn to drugs which turns out hurting them more than helping them in the end. This is a good way to make the pain of missing their family and forgetting about all the gruesome things happening at war. Society seems to put soldiers on a pedestal when they leave for war, but when they return broken, society doesn’t accept them as heroes anymore. This is unfair to the veterans because they risk their lives when they go off to war, and they can’t control how PTSD will affect them. Society shouldn’t treat them any less of a hero when they return from war because they can’t help how PTSD tolls with their minds. 

War veterans seem to keep their feelings bottled up and feel depressed, angry and can have flashbacks of things that happened to them when they were at war. This is why a lot of war veterans turn to drugs and alcohol as a coping mechanism to self-medicate. Many veterans will be arrested for illegal activity as a result of the drugs and alcohol such as DUI, murder and assault. In the VanGuard video, David Poe did a study that proved that 1 in 5 prisoners were in fact war veterans and they were traumatized by the war and that was the reason they lashed out with violence. In “The Things They Carried” one of the men acted out with violence many times, this was in fact one of the ways that PTSD was affecting him. I feel like a lot of people think that soldiers are just trying to use PTSD as an excuse to get away with violence, but common symptoms can be flashbacks to war.  Soldiers are trained to kill and be violent when they are at war, and when suffering from PTSD they aren’t aware of what they are doing and can sometimes think that they are just doing their jobs and protecting themselves. It’s not right to criminalize veterans who are sick with PTSD because they went and fought for our freedom and shouldn’t be repaid by going to jail because they were trying to cope with reality and didn’t know how to. 

When veterans have flashbacks to war they usually act out irrationally or violently because the flashbacks are so vivid and they aren’t in the right state of mind to realize what they are doing. If the situation is bad enough, veterans can be dishonorably discharged from the military. This is one of the worst things that can happen to a war veteran because it’s like taking away their pride.There are government policies that state that if a veteran is dishonorably discharged from the military then they don’t receive health care benefits anymore. A study conducted by Public Citizen found that out of the 7,851,118 soldiers that fought in the Vietnam war, 681,808 didn’t receive any health coverage when they returned from war.  In an online interview by Rachel Martin she talked to a veteran, Reed Holway, and he explained how hard it is for him to get a job after receiving a dis-honorable discharge “I can't ever do anything with my life. I can never get a job with benefits because every time I go to get a job and they know that I have a bad-conduct discharge - you know, I can't get anything because the BCD.” (Reed Holway) The government is doing the veterans wrong, they are going off to war for our country and the reason that they are in such a bad place in their life is from the results of war. Their lives are completely changed and there is no way for them to change their life around after being discharged from the military because it follows them around everywhere. Veterans have a hard enough time trying to find a job after being in the military because they don’t have any past working experiences or skills to bring to the table. A company isn’t going to want to hire someone who doesn’t have skills and could possibly be struggling with PTSD, the government is putting these suffering war veterans in an impossible place.

In conclusion, veterans go through many challenges every day that were caused from going off to war. I don’t think that if any of them knew that when they returned from war that they would be treated so unfairly that they would be so eager to go off to war. Veterans shouldn’t have to face the challenges of PTSD on their own, lose their health care benefits, and suffer in prison because they had no control over how PTSD overtook them. Society shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the problems that PTSD has caused to so many people and their families, society need to stand up for them and fight for veterans like they did for our freedom. 
