Please listen to Faiz’s heart of sorrow and humanity in remembering death and war
I can tell the story of a war in which I lost my brother...
in front of me, before my eyes.. they shot him, with a Kalashnikov.
.. a massacre… a cave on our way, in which we saw 60 corpses with our own eyes
We were very frightened but we did not have any choice.
What could we have done?
I remember how people were unjustly beaten up,
how arms were dismembered,
how eyes were gouged out…
Sometimes, I don’t know how to feel & I wonder who & where I am.
The memories of war affect me very negatively.
What do you request of those who are harsh, the war-mongers, those who have become habitually violent?
I request them not to murder anyone ; come live in a humane society, to stop these cruel and inhumane acts.
Faiz Ahmad, you and I, or any human being who has witnessed these dismembering and eye-gouging horrors of war, cannot be the same again.
As a medical practitioner, I’m certain that we would all qualify as sufferers of post-traumatic stress, according to the DSM Criteria, and experience the painful symptoms not just for the one month period required for diagnosis.
If we didn’t suffer such stresses on our conscience, we would be the disordered ones, unlike the war veterans who respond humanely with a pain they carry for the rest of their lives, some of whom eventually take to suicide in hope of a kinder world beyond.
13th Jan 2010 The United States Veteran Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki noted that of the more than 30,000 suicides each year in America, about 20 percent are committed by veterans. Why do we know so much about suicides but still know so little about how to prevent them?" Shinseki said. "Simple question, but we continue to be challenged."
Post-traumatic stress should be cared for optimally and with love, because it is an order of our conscience that can save humanity.
It puts an onus on us to prevent such in-humane experiences by the eradication of war.
Those who have witnessed others killed with the maximal violence humans can muster should not have to suffer alone. They do not deserve the derision of those who erroneously consider them weak and as having a dis-order.
Our cold, clinical medical ‘intelligence’ will never match their saving conscience.
It reminds me that as we cope with the harsh Afghan winter cold in a medieval system of poor heating, it is the difficult elements of nature that point us to the salvation of community warmth.
Post Traumatic Stress is an ORDER of human conscience that can save humanity
Why I, a family physician, consider Post Traumatic Stress from war a natural order of human conscience, and NOT a disorder.
1. It is a natural order that should be managed holistically and with love, because it is an order that arises out of an intact CONSCIENCE.
Our medical diagnostic label has inadvertently mis-represented what is a natural and expected human response to extreme violence as an un-natural disease.
Which of us would NOT be stressed witnessing a brutal killing?
If we believe that it is a courageous man who watches slaughter calmly, we have lost something essential about being human. For that logic to stand scrutiny, we would have to condone holding a ‘bravest man competition’ in which contestants watch as many ‘live’ killings as he can tolerate without feeling sick, or sad.
If we believe that it’s patriotic to kill any suspicious ‘enemy’, grievous would be the day the ‘enemy’ was your own child and unconscionable the act that puts a country above a fellow human being.
2. It is a natural order because it is our passionate response to in-humanity.
Yes, we must help the post-traumatic stress sufferer, BUT, we mustn’t call it a DIS-ORDER.
It’s inaccurate to call it a disorder
It is in essence a natural human ORDER that when we have witnessed horrible violence or personally experienced terrible trauma, we become stressed, often very stressed. It is Man’s inherent way of coping with events which are entirely in-congruous with how a good, peaceful life should be.
We label something as disordered when it mal-functions and behaves abnormally. Feeling scared, sorrowful and repulsed by killings is not a malfunction and is not abnormal. It is how our bodies, together with our hearts, minds and conscience, NORMALLY FUNCTIONS.
It’s a PARADOX to call it a disorder. The person who doesn’t feel remorseful or traumatized, who forces himself into ‘courageously’ accepting that the violent killing was normal or even kind and who convinces himself to perpetuate the violence, is THE disordered one.
So, sufferers should be helped to cope with their stress by acknowledging that their feelings are normal, while we should worry about the truly disordered response of a numbed conscience which allows continued mass killings.
It is not a disease to hate or be angry and sad over the scenes of bodies and blood splattering everywhere or to detest the violent manner in which a loved one or a fellow human died.
3. It is a natural order whose onus on humanity is to work towards the eradication of war. It can save humanity.
The current crisis of increasing suicides among war veterans points us to an urgent need to prevent this suffering by abstaining from and preventing acts of war and violence.
It is the onus and responsibility of the medical, civil and military communities to heal and save humanity definitively.
Irish Nobel peace laureate Mairead Maguire
“Killing goes against everything we're taught from childhood about love and compassion.
It goes against every religious doctrine and moral code.
It's small wonder that so many come back from war sick at heart.
We have to start to disarm our own minds and look at the fact that there are always alternatives to violence.
We must create the idea that to even think of war is horrific. “
Kevin O hill was a 23 year old American soldier killed in Afghanistan
Kevin seemed “kind of distant” to his friend Darryl. “Like he had a lot of stuff on his mind, like his mind was racing,” Darryl said. “He told me he had seen a dead body in front of him.”
Olsen Hill, Kevin’s father, picked it up to hear his wife, Mahalia Hill, screaming on the other end.
“Having to tell her on the phone, and not being able to hold her. And to hear them scream, without being able to hold them. That just made it even worse. Nine hours, driving and crying, driving and crying,” he said. “I don’t know whether he suffered or not, and that’s what kills me. In terms of details, him being shot before or after. I just try not to think about it because it’s too much, too much,” his father said, his voice breaking. “None of us wanted him to go into the military. Well not in the Army anyway because I was in the Army in the first Gulf War, and I knew what war was like. And so I didn’t want my son experiencing combat like I did,” said Olsen Hill. He told his son about the constant fear, of not knowing where the next bullet, mine, or sniper was hidden.
309.81 DSM-IV Criteria for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
A. The person has been exposed to a traumatic event in which both of the following have been present:
(1) the person experienced, witnessed, or was confronted with an event or events that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others (2) the person's response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror. Note: In children, this may be expressed instead by disorganized or agitated behavior.
B. The traumatic event is persistently reexperienced in one (or more) of the following ways:
(1) recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections of the event, including images, thoughts, or perceptions. Note: In young children, repetitive play may occur in which themes or aspects of the trauma are expressed.
(2) recurrent distressing dreams of the event. Note: In children, there may be frightening dreams without recognizable content.
(3) acting or feeling as if the traumatic event were recurring (includes a sense of reliving the experience, illusions, hallucinations, and dissociative flashback episodes, including those that occur upon awakening or when intoxicated). Note: In young children, trauma-specific reenactment may occur.
(4) intense psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event.
(5) physiological reactivity on exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event.
C. Persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma and numbing of general responsiveness (not present before the trauma), as indicated by three (or more) of the following:
(1) efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings, or conversations associated with the trauma
(2) efforts to avoid activities, places, or people that arouse recollections of the trauma
(3) inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma
(4) markedly diminished interest or participation in significant activities
(5) feeling of detachment or estrangement from others
(6) restricted range of affect (e.g., unable to have loving feelings)
(7) sense of a foreshortened future (e.g., does not expect to have a career, marriage, children, or a normal life span)
D. Persistent symptoms of increased arousal (not present before the trauma), as indicated by two (or more) of the following:
(1) difficulty falling or staying asleep
(2) irritability or outbursts of anger
(3) difficulty concentrating
(4) hyper-vigilance
(5) exaggerated startle response
E. Duration of the disturbance (symptoms in Criteria B, C, and D) is more than one month.
F. The disturbance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.
Specify if:
Acute: if duration of symptoms is less than 3 months
Chronic: if duration of symptoms is 3 months or more
Specify if:
With Delayed Onset: if onset of symptoms is at least 6 months after the stressor
