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Fri Feb 18, 2011 12:08 pm
The rate of suicide among soldiers and recent veterans has nearly doubled since the Iraq War began, according to the U.S. Department of Defense. More than 1,100 U.S. servicemen and women killed themselves between 2005 and 2009. More than 6,500 U.S. veterans commit suicide each year -- about 18 a day -- with numbers rising, according to Department of Defense figures.
"No one gets away free," said Dr. Jim Goodwin, a semi-retired Wenatchee psychologist who was one of the first medical professionals to define the characteristics of PTSD in the early 1980s. Goodwin is probably best known for his strong advocacy of the antidepressant Prozac. The national press called him the "Pied Piper of Prozac," after he appeared on Oprah Winfrey, CNN and in other media in the early 1990s.
But before Prozac was available Goodwin was already well known for his work on PTSD, a term that wasn't widely known before he published his groundbreaking work, "The Etiology of Combat-Related Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders." A U.S. Marine who saw combat in Vietnam in the early 1970s, Goodwin wrote his paper as his doctorate thesis at the University of Denver while volunteering as a counselor for the Vietnam Veterans Outreach Program. He later re-enlisted in the military and was an U.S. Army psychologist with the rank of captain from 1980 to 1988. He helped treat thousands of soldiers and veterans with PTSD during that time and afterward in private practice. He's had his own struggles with PTSD.
His thesis was first published in 1980 as a pamphlet by the national nonprofit group Disabled American Veterans. More than 3.5 million copies were distributed. It's still used today and considered one of the seminal works describing PTSD.
"Everybody who returns from combat suffers from it to a degree. What was needed was a criteria to establish who would get help," said Goodwin, 63. He ran into a lot of opposition from the Army. The Army accused him of trying to turn its men into babies. A lot of soldiers were discharged because of "character disorders," he said.
"They thought war was good for men. We were working with returning veterans who were really struggling, but there wasn't a name for it," he said. Certainly, the problem existed for previous wars, when soldiers returned with problems labeled as shell shock, combat stress, battle fatigue and combat neuroses. But largely, soldiers were told to return home, forget about the war and be men, said Goodwin.
That seemed to work for awhile, but studies made at different intervals following World War II showed there were some combat veterans suffering from problems that included intense anxiety, battle dreams, depression and aggressive behavior, according to Goodwin's research.
Vietnam was different from previous wars because it was America's first guerilla war, he said. Soldiers were fighting in jungles and not against a uniformed enemy but men, women and children who could not be distinguished from civilians. Soldiers were focused on the day they could return home and leave war behind, Goodwin said, but when they did they were not treated like heroes because of the war's unpopularity. Many were spit on and called baby-killers.
Veterans of recent conflicts have been better treated than Vietnam veterans were when they returned home from that unpopular war, he said. They also have had wider availability of therapy and new antidepressants like Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft, as well as several other medications, during and after active military duty. A recent Army study found that 17 percent of its active military were using some sort of antidepressant. Most veterans diagnosed with PTSD take medications, Goodwin said.
From Rick Steigmeyer The Wenatchee World, Wash. 11/11/2010