American Psychiatric Association Supports the War in Iraq

[SoDesuKa]

The American Psychiatric Association refuses to recognize the traumatizing effect of the actual guilt of returning soldiers. The APA supports the ideological view that when American soldiers feel guilt it is the result of a disorder. The following paragraph is illustrative:

"The recognition of PTSD as a major health problem in this country is quite recent. Over the past 15 years, research has produced a major explosion of knowledge about the ways people deal with trauma--what places them at risk for development of long-term problems, and what helps them to cope. Psychiatrists and other mental health professionals are working hard to disseminate this understanding, and an increasing number of mental health professionals are receiving specialized training to help them reach out to people with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder in their communities ..."

http://www.healthyplace.com/communities/abuse/site/ptsd_overview.htm

At no point in the larger article does the APA acknowledge soldiers' actual guilt or what clinicians should do about it. Returning veterans are left to drift for themselves, being told that the guilt they feel is all in their head. But let's face it - waging war on another country is a really shitty thing to do, especially when it's unnecessary and unprovoked. It's not surprising that GI's returning from Iraq feel guilty about what they've done.

For many of these returning veterans, the burden is too great and they ruin their lives with alcohol and drug abuse. The APA does these soldiers no favor in taking sides. Calling their guilt a disorder does not alleviate the underlying problem.

[KG]

1. interesting side effect of the invasion - increase in business for shrinks

maybe they should be included in the MIC?

[politicat]

3. Don't lump all of us together. The Am Psychological Assoc won't comment

And my local chapter of Psi Chi is anti-war, one reason being that we can't absorb the influx of PTSD and situational depression clients with the current numbers of public mental health providers in the country.

The APA does not speak for the psychologists of the nation.

Pcat

[SoDesuKa]

9. Situational Depression

The APA is promoting the view that guilt is a medical problem. When soldiers wage an unnecessary, unprovoked war and they feel guilty about their participation, that is not a disorder.

[Cocoa]

2. another Harrison Ford situation

just like Ford was not a republican pig, nor did he support the war, in your previous article, here the APA does not comment on Iraq.

[SoDesuKa]

8. APA Objectivity

When the APA describes the guilt of returning soldiers as a disorder, that certainly is a comment on the war. It's similar to what Nazi doctors did when they invented medical terms to describe Jewish resistance.

[tx_dem41]

11. Lets look at the scope of the article that you aren't addressing...

From the article:

"The disorder is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and it affects hundreds of thousands of people who have been exposed to violent events such as rape, domestic violence, child abuse, war, accidents, natural disasters and political torture."

From your logic, can I conclude that the APA is supporting rape as well?

[Cocoa]

13. don't forget natural disasters

the APA is pro-earthquake!

[SoDesuKa]

18. Exposure to War

There's a significant moral difference among people who've been exposed to war, depending on whether they're the invaders or the invaded. Such neutral terms equate the victim with the perpetrator. We don't speak of exposure in the other contexts mentioned.

We don't describe the guilt of a rapist as the product of a disorder. And we should not automatically use terms like PTSD to describe the guilty feelings of soldiers who wage an unnecessary and unprovoked war. Like the true victims of war, they've been "exposed" to war, but soldiers' guilty feelings arise from awareness of personal wrongdoing.

[mslux]

4. Makers of Prozac support the war! n/t

[Pegleg Thd]

5. Proves that those

Quacks are as crazy as boosh.

[tx_dem41]

6. Can you explain the title of your post...vs. the article you reference?

[SoDesuKa]

12. Taking Sides

In denying the actual guilt of returning soldiers, the APA is taking sides in a controversy. These soldiers feel guilty because they are guilty. At the very least, any APA publication about guilt and PTSD should contain a disclaimer to that effect. Don't hold your breath waiting for it.

[RobinA]

17. The APA

is not in the business of guilt assignment and/or punishment. A psychologist deals with the PERSON in front of him/her. There are ways of dealing with a person's feelings of guilt over things they have done. The whole sin/guilt/repentance-industrial complex is more appropriately left to the voodoo men in their pulpits.

[SoDesuKa]

20. Voodoo Men

The APA has sidestepped the issue of the morality of unnecessary, unprovoked wars such as the invasion of Iraq. In doing so, they avoid addressing guilt-induced trauma, limiting their concern to the much easier problem of trauma-induced guilt. It's a violation of the Hippocratic Oath.

[RobinA]

25. The APA

is not in the business of taking positions on the morality or geo-political conflicts. It has a diverse membership that probably includes many viewpoints and whether or not we should be at war with Iraq is well outside their expertise as an organization.

And what is guilt-induced trauma in this context?

[SoDesuKa]

31. Hippocratic Oath

Doctors are not factory workers who can safely ignore the political context of their actions, whether as individuals or collectively as members of a professional group. APA's refusal to address the life struggles certain classes of returning soldiers leaves these individuals to cope on their own. These are real people, not abstractions.

The war in Iraq is wrong, and the soldiers who fight in it know the harm they do. Doctors who attribute these soldiers' guilty feelings to a disorder are not being "objective" - they are making themselves comfortable at the expense of people experiencing tremendous pain. These doctors are violating the Hippocratic Oath.

Jeffrey Lucey's father came home from work June 22 to find the TV on, his son's Iraqi dog tags on the bed and the cellar door open. He walked the 10 steps down to the cellar, and saw a small semi-circle of picture frames on the ground photographs of Lucey and his Marine unit flanked by pictures of his girlfriend and his family. The glass in one of the frames was broken, and his mother later found the shards on the floor of her son's room next to the blood stains.

Kevin Lucey took another step and saw his son's feet hanging two inches above the ground. He doesn't remember if he screamed -- he wanted to act quickly. He lifted his 165-pound son, took the noose off his neck, and made a small pillow out of the rug on the floor.

http://www.trend-one.com/new-2380083-4519.html

[pnb]

37. In other words...

...because the APA didn't actively take YOUR side, that must mean they suppport the other side. Sorry, but that doesn't wash.

[Joe Chi Minh]

7. These materialists

are an utter disgrace to medicine and empirical science, generally.

They are the kind of educated cretins who so often claw/grovel their way to the governing bodies of professional Estabishments. Their counterparts in an earlier age even devised a pompous-sounding word designating as a mental disorder a propensity on the part of certain slaves for escaping!!!! I wish I could remember it.

These are the people who state that a psychopathic condition is untreatable. Medically, of course it is untreatable, you idiots! Because it's not a medical condition, but a spiritual one!

Mind you, I think it highly likely that some of them will, themselves, be psycopaths. They virtually define themselves as such by designating a feeling of guilt as a disorder. After all it must the one of *the* most defining characteristiccs of the psycopath.

[RobinA]

10. Makes No Sense

This post doesn't make any sense. You somehow get the notion that the APA (which, by the way, is the American Psychological Association) supports the war in Iraq from their statement that they are trying to disseminate info, increase knowledge of PTSD, and get more people trained in its treatment. What does this have to do with supporting the war?

And what other kind of guilt is there than "actual guilt"? Fake guilt? Artificial guilt? Part of treating PTSD is dealing with guilt, so if people are being trained to treat PTSD they are being trained to deal with the guilt that comes with it. It sounds to me that the APA is taking the side of wanting to treat PTSD. Pick up a book on PTSD, why not, and learn what you are talking about.

[SoDesuKa]

14. Medicalizing a Political Problem

It's normal and natural to feel guilty when you are guilty of wrongdoing. I called that "actual" guilt as opposed to guilt as a symptom of a disorder. There's no disorder when guilty people feel guilty; it's normal, natural and appropriate.

I said American Psychiatric Association because that's what it says on the website where I took the quote from. Maybe it's a separate group. See http://www.healthyplace.com/communities/abuse/site/ptsd_overview.htm

Much "PTSD" is in fact war guilt. The use of medical terms to describe political problems is well known. In the days before feminism, women who were dissatisfied with their "natural" place were said to be hysterical, a word derived from hysteros - uterus. Nazi doctors had a medical term to describe Jewish resistance to the Holocaust.

[tx_dem41]

16. But what if you're a soldier and not guilty of wrongdoing? n/t

[SoDesuKa]

21. Innocent Soldiers

Some soldiers are innocent. Supply clerks, people like that. It's a lot more problematic for combat troops to avoid actual guilt. When these people come home feeling guilty, it's not because of a disorder. It's because of actual wrongdoing.

[tx_dem41]

22. But I have a problem with your use of "some"....

...the large majority of soldiers that fired a bullet in any war did so in a situation that could be defined as "self-defense". Where would their guilt come from?

And the article does not dilineate between "war" and the "Iraq war". Do you feel that WWI and WWII soldiers felt this guilt? Or was it just "some" soldiers that didn't?

[SoDesuKa]

24. No Disclaimer

This group of doctors should acknowledge that not all guilt is the result of a disorder. Publications about PTSD should state that some guilt is normal and appropriate. Doctors shouldn't hide behind artificially neutral expressions like exposure to war.

People who commit murder rape and arson can be said to be "exposed" to them, and indeed be traumatized by their own guilt. But when we speak of exposure to murder rape and arson we don't generally include the perpetrator.

[RobinA]

27. You Seem to Want

the APA to make value judgments about whether the origins of a person's guilt are "good" or "bad." The psychologist is concerned with the effect of the guilt on the person's functioning. Value judgments of the sort you want to make do not belong in psychology.

[SoDesuKa]

33. Value Judgements

Doctors can't avoid making value judgements; it's part of being a doctor. They're not factory workers assembling a product - they are professionals treating human beings.

The Iraq war has brought out some of the uglier aspects of contemporary medicine. Should doctors have participated in torture at Abu Ghraib? Certainly not. Doctors shouldn't lend professional respectability to reprehensible behavior.

[RobinA]

36. Apples and Oranges

Of course Drs shouldn't be involved with Abu Ghraib type atrocities.

But you were talking about treating people with PTSD, not taking part in atrocities. If a Dr can't treat a soldier with PTSD without getting bogged down in the morality of being a soldier, or the morality of the war itself, he/she needs to refer the patient to someone who can.

Treating soldiers with PTSD is not lending respectability to reprehensible behavior, it's helping a person in trouble.

[SoDesuKa]

42. Jeff Lucey's Group Therapy

You have an idealized sense of what actually goes on in VA hospitals. Jeff Lucey was most likely told he should get over his guilty feelings. Maybe he didn't get that in one-on-one sessions with a psychiatrist, but he certainly got that in group. I do not believe that anyone in the VA encouraged him to seek forgiveness.

A positive step forward in the rehabilation of soldiers in the kind of pain Jeff Lucey felt would be to stop telling them they're wrong to feel that way. These guys are coming back by the hundreds from a war in which they've personally engaged in great wrongdoing. They're not whiners or nut jobs, or any of the things that Jeff Lucey almost certainly was called.

[RobinA]

19. The Guilt of a Soldier

may or may not be a symptom of a disorder. The point of treatment of guilt as a symptom of PTSD is to help the patient accurately access his or her contribution to what happened, and then deal with the part that is his.

You can have PTSD from driving drunk and causing a 30 car pile-up that kills five infants. Going to a psychologist for relief from the ensuing symptoms is not negating the fact that you are 1) guilty, and 2) experiencing normal emotions. It also doesn't mean that your psychologist supports drunk driving. Disorder in this case means a state that causes dysfunction in living some part of your life. It's not a term that implies judgment one way or another.

If you want to cast people into the fires of hell for their actions, see a priest, not the APA.

[SoDesuKa]

28. Jeff Lucey

I said nothing about throwing soldiers into Hell, where did you get that from? I said that guilty feelings arising from guilt are different from guilty feelings arising from a disorder. They are not one and the same, and it's a mistake to equate the two.

Speaking only of trauma-induced guilt, without including guilt-induced guilt, creates a gap in recognition of the struggles of the affected population. These people, like 23-year old Jeff Lucey, are left to fend for themselves, and some of them fail.

Lucey signed up for the Marine Reserves straight out of high school. In February 2003, one month before the invasion, he was shipped out to Iraq. He was deployed there for five months, during which he fought in the battle of Nasiriyah. He returned to the U.S. later that year.

A few months after his return, Jeffrey's parents, Kevin and Joyce, began noticing signs of what they later came to know as post-traumatic stress syndrome. In late May 2004, they had Jeffrey involuntarily committed to a military veteran's hospital after he ignored his parents' and sister, Debbie's pleas to seek help. The hospital discharged him after a few days.

Three weeks later on June 22nd, Jeffrey Lucey took his own life. He was 23 years old. His father, Kevin came home to find his son had hung himself with a hose in the cellar of their house. The dog tags of two Iraqi prisoners he said he was forced to shoot unarmed, lay on his bed.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/11/145205

[RobinA]

32. I Still Don't Follow

your thinking. Where is the notion that guilt arising from a disorder and guilt arising from doing something are different coming from? I don't know what guilt arising from a disorder is. Everybody in war is part of something ugly. The supply sargeant can suffer from just as much PTSD as the guy on the front. As can the guy up in the plane dropping smart bombs. Some guys on the front don't suffer from PTSD.

Why do you think that psycholgists are going to treat the supply sargeant the same as the guy on the front or the guy in the plane? The treating psychologist is going to take each soldier's individual circumstances into consideration when treating him.

Are you implying that a psychologist treating Jeff Lucey should say to him, "Sorry guy, you shot unarmed Iraqis. Your guilt is normal, so go away and suffer from your normal feelings?" His psychologist sees in front of him a soldier who has been to war, has experienced certain things, and is now suffering the aftermath and is possibily suicidal. That's a disorder. The guy next to Jeff in the field is feeling just okey dokey. He doesn't have a disorder. The psychologist is interested in keeping Jeff from committing suicide and then helping him going on to live a normal life. All "disorder" means is a deviation from what is considered to be "normal" functioning that causes the person distress. It doesn't get more disordered than suicide.

My reference to your desire to cast people into the fire refers to the fact that you seem to want to judge the soldier in war and somehow toss his guilt away as just a normal reaction to being a soldier.

[SoDesuKa]

35. Normal Guilt

You still haven't acknowledged that people whose guilty feelings arise from personal wrongdoing are different from people whose guilty feelings arise from being traumatized in some innocent way. If you were to make that acknowledgement, I would consider it a breakthrough. However, as things stand, neither the APA nor the Veteran's Administration addresses the struggle of soldiers like Jeff Lucey, who believed he was a murderer. The appropriateness of such feelings certainly affects the disposition of the case, don't you think?

The VA totally failed Jeff Lucey. VA psychologists made an inappropriate diagnosis of PTSD, when in fact Lucey was suffering from guilt arising from his own behavior. There are many more soldiers like Jeff Lucey who will be returning from Iraq. We should get a handle on how to deal with this, rather than defend craven doctors.

[RobinA]

38. I Will Acknowledge This

<<<You still haven't acknowledged that people whose guilty feelings arise from personal wrongdoing are different from people whose guilty feelings arise from being traumatized in some innocent way>>>

I think this is a strawman. The psychologist treats the soldier he has in front of him. The psychologists treats based on what the person experienced. I will acknowledge that a psychologist treating a soldier who killed unarmed Iraqs will approach the treatment differently than treatment of the supply sergeant.

You want me to condemn the soldier. I will not. I will regard the soldier as a person with a history, some traumatic experiences, a problem, and a set of resources to solve the problem.

Who says a person with PTSD never did anything he considers immoral? The idea is, if he did do something immoral, to help him live with the consequences. Either that or you condemn him to hell.

[SoDesuKa]

40. Condemning the Soldier

I am not asking you to condemn the soldier, just to acknowledge that some guilty feelings are appropriate and some aren't. If you agree to call them Guilt A and Guilt B - or some other neutral term - I'll call it a breakthrough. We can start to address the unique problems of soldiers returning from a war that's intensely morally compromising.

[noonwitch]

15. If the APA says that returning soldiers don't have a disorder, than the VA

won't have to pay for treatment. Compassionate conservatism, at work, saving the american taxpayer money.

[SoDesuKa]

23. Appropriate Guilt

The guilt of soldiers isn't always the result of a disorder. Guilty feelings are normal and appropriate when they result from personal wrongdoing. The war in Iraq is wrong, and it's not surprising that returning soldiers feel guilty about participating in it.

The Veteran's Administration, a government agency, will not oppose the Defense Department. However, the APA is not a government agency and it should not take sides.

[RobinA]

26. But Above

you castigate the APA for NOT taking sides and condemning unprovoked wars.

[SoDesuKa]

30. False Objectivity

Doctors violate the Hippocratic Oath when for the sake of their political comfort they refuse to recognize the struggles of soldiers coping with real guilt. Returning veterans like Jeff Lucey go mad from the pain of knowing the terrible wrongs they've committed. Lucey, who was 23 when he committed suicide, was unable to cope with guilt from his own actions.

Lucey's guilt was not the result of trauma; his trauma was the result of his guilt. Doctors who refuse to address the real issues here are acting out of moral cowardice.

... And then there is the story. The story Lucey kept bottled up inside him until last Christmas, when he finally let it out.

"Don't you understand?" he shouted at his sister, Debra. "Your brother is a murderer."

That's when Debra Lucey first saw the dog tags. The ones Lucey said he took off the necks of the two Iraqi soldiers he was forced to shoot, one in the eye, the other in the back of the neck. The dog tags were simple, with faint letters scratched into their cheap metal, Debra remembers thinking. Lucey never took the dog tags out, and this was the first time he had shown them to the family ...

http://www.trend-one.com/new-2380083-4519.html

[RobinA]

34. Who Says This?

<<< they refuse to recognize the struggles of soldiers coping with real guilt.>>>

Where do you get this idea? Doctors know full well what their patients have expereinced, because (if) the patients tell them. You don't think that a Dr. treats a person who killed six unarmed Iraqs differently from the supply sergeant?

[SoDesuKa]

39. Jeff Lucey's PTSD

The records are sealed, but it seems clear that in Lucey's case, VA doctors pursued orthodox treatment methods, calling his struggles the result of PTSD. Stubbornly persisting in this misdiagnosis, they drove the patient to suicide because of their refusal to acknowledge the appropriateness of his feelings. Doctors have a long history of doing things like this.

The APA still refuses to acknowledge a difference between guilt as a symptom of trauma and guilt as awareness of personal wrongdoing. Look for more returning soldiers to trash their lives because of their guilt. Well, shit happens.

[RobinA]

41. You Know This?

Drs persisting in orthodox treatment methods, misdiagnosis, refusal to acknowledge, drove him to suicide? How do you know? His treatment was apparently unsuccessful. That doesn't mean it was inappropriate. Unsuccessful treatment has many reasons. Your assumption that Drs didn't recognize that he had normal feelings of guilt because of personal wrongdoing is not only without foundation in this case, but it is without foundation as to relevance.

[SoDesuKa]

44. Suicides at Walter Reed

The suicide rate at Walter Reed is very high, probably because these guys aren't allowed to entertain the idea that they've been played for suckers. That's certainly the truth, but the Collective Myth that prevails at Walter Reed says that it's not. It may not be therapeutic to allow such patients to dwell on morbid thoughts, but lying to them has the downside of making them feel utterly isolated.

Of course, Walter Reed is a military hospital, and VA patients are mostly civilians. However, nobody in the VA is going to encourage patients to admit they were swindled by the military. But if that's how guys like Jeff Lucey feel, telling them they're wrong just pushes them over the edge.

There's a simpler remedy here. Doctors should stop automatically diagnosing PTSD when patients complain of guilt. If you argue with them over it after the fact, you push them over the edge - with tragic consequences.

[ItsThePeopleStupid]

43. "refusal to acknowledge the appropriateness of his feelings"

So you're saying that you want psychologists/psychiatrists to get into the business of deciding what feelings are appropriate? You want them to tell their patients, "you *should* feel guilty" or "yes, that's *real* guilt"???

Do you believe other people's feelings are either real or fake, depending on how they conform to your own value judgments?

I don't think you know much about human nature.

[SoDesuKa]

45. Appropriate Feelings

Actually, mental health professionals make judgments about appropriate feelings all the time. When a patient presents with inappropriate feelings, the doctor makes a diagnosis of some kind of illness or disorder. However, the guilty feelings of Iraq war veterans aren't necessarily inappropriate. Therefore, it's wrong to stick a PTSD label on them, as was done in the case of 23-year old Jeffrey Lucey.

Lucey had killed two Iraqi prisoners and felt like a murderer. Because such killing is in violation of the Geneva Accords, Lucey actually was a murderer. VA doctors misdiagnosed his guilt as PTSD, and one may surmise that they encouraged him to get over it. This further alienated Lucey, and drove him to suicide. However, Lucey's guilty feelings were appropriate because of his wrong-doing. His treatment should have proceeded on that basis. It didn't, because many doctors these days are moral cowards. In violation of the Hippocratic Oath, they put their political comfort over the needs of their patients.



Edit: missing word

[ItsThePeopleStupid]

48. not sure where you get this

The DSM always calls something a disorder if, and only if, it interferes with a person's ability to function.

Feelings are feelings. They are valid simply because they exist. Morality applies to behavior, not feelings.

[durutti]

29. The APA is in big business's pocket.

Has been for about a quarter of a century.

[ItsThePeopleStupid]

46. PTSD definition

Main Entry: post-traumatic stress disorder
Function: noun
: a psychological reaction that occurs after experiencing a highly stressing event (as wartime combat, physical violence, or a natural disaster) outside the range of normal human experience and that is usually characterized by depression, anxiety, flashbacks, recurrent nightmares, and avoidance of reminders of the event -- abbreviation PTSD ; called also delayed-stress disorder, delayed-stress syndrome, post-traumatic stress syndrome -- compare COMBAT FATIGUE

Besides misunderstanding what therapists do, you are trying to apply a moral code suited for US culture to a continual combat environment.

[SoDesuKa]

47. Lucey's Guilt

Lucey's guilt was called PTSD, which implies that the doctors considered it a disorder. But it was not a disorder - Lucey had executed two prisoners, in violation of the Geneva Accords. He saw himself as a murderer, and felt guilty. His guilt was appropriate, and doctors' refusal to validate his feelings pushed him over the edge.

There are other Jeffrey Lucey's. We owe it to them to deal with them honestly. We sent them there, and we put them in morally compromising situations.

[Moderator]

49. Locking.

Misleading and flamebait.