What happens to our soldiers when they return

The US military is great at training our military on how to kill somebody, but do they do a good job of helping them recover after they have done that or have seen it occur?

A report came out about a year ago that said that one sixth of the US military that comes back from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from some type of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Of the 140,000 soldiers that we have in Iraq today that would equate to 23,000 soldiers! But that does not include all of the soldiers that have come back. There are probably closer to 500,000 soldiers that have been there or are there. That means that 83,000 soldiers could be suffering from some type of PTSD!!! But, wait it gets worse.

During Vietnam a third of the soldiers in that conflict suffered from PSTD or combat stress. Because the situation in Iraq has gotten much more violent we can expect much more of the soldiers currently in Iraq to suffer from PTSD.

There is good news though. The military is doing a lot more to address the affects of PTSD, but soldiers are concerned that going for psychological counseling will ruin their careers.
Even 20 year veterans suffer from this for the first time. They are afraid of looking weak.

A three day series by Nightline on ABC has covered this topic. The last part of this series is tonight. Please check it out. After watching this you will realize that many more soldiers are casualties of the war than the approx. 9,000 that have sufferred from a physical wound. Frequently soldiers have psychological damage as well.