Department basically predicted it would not happen as general shinseki had a more robust presence and pushed aside aggressively and the consequences of that with the early policy decisions played out over the years. So certainly there is details with that at the policy level we want people to think about what it meant to be one of those marines or Us State Department guy to build the society up and what that was like and how that was affected by the past but on a daytoday basis. For use thinking of trading when you were deployed or were you taking notes when you were deployed . I took a lot of notes a was right thing but not about war mostly very, very bad short stories and ive learned Anthony Powell had quit writing during world war ii i felt like that excuse me for all the things i had written them were awful. But i did come back with notes and a lot of memories but the source material that i had with the nature of my job by which travel lot and its been time with units so that certainly affected what it was like because is you talk with industry guys to get a different picture of the 04 even just from people. Ahead to friends named madge both of the save area, the same calvary and the same translator but one was 2006 the other was two years later and could not have been more different. But it gave me a subject that felt vitally important to me. I had to do a lot of work as i was routine the collection. Riding the collection but i was scared to get the wrong. En telling things that might upset people. Wars make raiders sent for you they began to fade not on the front pages anymore but in terms of an understanding of the men and women who servedw n and what should we continue to know . I dont know. [laughter] but that somebody would take away one thing theyre other veterans there is mower literature coming out about the words on ashley war but what i want people to do instead there is a beltway with the feelings about the of war and what that feels like on a human level is extremely important and not falling into a false myth about the war. Thanks everyone. [applause] thanks for coming out if anyone wants the book signed we have copies just outside the door you can get it personalized and pay after i still trust most of you. [inaudible conversations] i think we are ready to start please turn off yourself phones we will beyond cspan today so this will be recorded i am a staff writer for the l. A. Times talking about the realities of war with three distinguished writers who have attacked a subjects from different angles america has been at war 13 years and the statistics are 22 veterans day killing themselves and of the 2 Million United States veterans that have banned to iraq for afghanistan are afflicted with posttraumatic says one dash stress disorder but last year did a series on veterans for the l. A. Times and i followed iraqs veterans and their families in getting to know these families i am eager what my panel has to say today i will introduce the guest and ask specific questions been general questions and open up to the audience. David is a journalist and author since 2007 has been documented the effects of war on the human psyche his most recent book thank you for your service. Has received numerous awards his previous book the good soldiers has won multiple awards and named the top than book of the year by the New York Times and editor and writer for the washington postfm reporting from africa and asia and Central America and europe and covered wars afghanistan and kosovo a Pulitzer Prize and macarthur foundatifoundati on genius grant is among his honors in 2012. To his right is david moores former marine infantry officer and cover the wars in iraq for slates in virginia quarterly review the first dispatch is titled the big notes from the jarhead underground his work has appeared in the new yorker and in this surfers journal in january 2015 he will release his book with ptsd. , with her novel the pulitzer the most creative writing textbooks and her Childrens Book said giant gm said which translated into 20. The new guardian and other publications her memoir losing tim which is about her son will come out april 2014. Please welcome our guests. [applause] mr. Finkel during the search trying to cope with life back home toe us the story of sgt schuman. Thank you for coming today. At an issue bin they had been the quick thing about the number doing some reporters on this just to be clear it is not 22 iraqi and afghanistan veterans it is all veterans when you examine that liggett the 22 on a particular day suicides are happening but most have gone on from service to do many other things a great number are over 60 is just worth pointing out it is direct line from the war experience to a suicide although i say it is not but not necessarily is the other part is when we look at the 2011 numbers which are the most recent with the number of young people but adam schuman i am happy to say is not one of them that might have been while i was reporting my first book for a good soldiers when i was asking around one day who was a great soldier someone said this guy adam schuman. Time went by and i got dizzy i walked into his room and the soldier was waiting by himself he was gaunt and was sitting by myself but i am leaving and what happened has has happened so often after three deployments 1,000 days the great soldier could not do it anymore his walk to the helicopter out all day with the policies of the wars been he would fight every measure as a great soldier not feeling any sense of accomplishment orl÷i success anatomy amanda in his mid 20s cloaked in shame. You can imagine the norways the line moves forward and when adam schuman gets to the front he is stopped. He says the next one is yours so he is there by himself waiting for the next helicopter it has the big red cross on the side and then he gets it the helicopter for the injured and the dead and that is who he has become. He is done if he goes home. My intent with the first book is to right journalistically about going into a war at a particular moment that something has happened this new show up and stay. With that question in 2007 when it reached that lost momentum of the tragic moment from a young man who goes into a war and adam schuman was one of the answers. And had a rough deployment and adam schuman and others were not doing very well with depression and things they were not expecting. So that tragic moment but here all of the people that did well to recover from the experiences of what they did, a sock, did not do or did not see. Thank you for your service and it begins with him and then he drops the baby and the book goes on from there and tell whole cluster of the people trying to get better. Every seamlessly now but how did you go about with the plan of attack for the reporting of it . They are around the country that you dont know which ones that is useful habit to you devise a plan to use your time most efficiently . The kid a million americans were imported directly 25 or 500,000 returning with psychological wounds to contend with us. The again the tepper journalism that i do with that battalion for eight months i stayed with it bad things happen and just to build up from there the first one wasnt getting during the war the second one is recovering families and the trust came from the first book because i knew everyone but to know we were going through it needs to be written about of a bite to come and hang out with you by the way you dont get to see the book until the is published because i am writing about you and you cannot be your own editor it requires a leap of faith on your part did you just go hang out and filled with familieshyn and think what a my missing . Shouldnt i be over there . You do the best you can. David morris your book tell us how your interest began and how it evolved . I came from a military family serving in vietnam so we dont know how to answer the question like vietnams but that was the first the ptsd comes from the vietnam not recognized until 1980 and grew out of that war experience trying to figure out where the interest started in that was the first question i ever ask my father is what happened in vietnam he was washing the car at the time i remember the stream of water going into the sidewalk. But i went to college in ptsd was on the minds of active duty but if you are familiar with the literature to see the taxi driver you get us sense that ptsd isnt the film so you grow up with an awareness of that if you have a sense of history and i pick that up from my dad and his friends i grew up in san diego and arguably the biggest military city in america. I did active duty time then of war and a lot of goodies that a trained with were over there. It was impossible for me to restore the war so i ended up calling working as a reporter at that point. People make jokes all the time you have that ptsd thing going . It is the fourth most diagnosed psychiatric disorder in the World Associated with soldiers but if you spend any time on base for marines who have returned it is part of the conversation and i run into people all the time. It is a rare in Southern California with the largest population i look dash is part of the environment debt this point. Challenging the understanding of the ptsd it was systematically over diagnosis cater explained the gist of this controversy . When i hear that criticism is hard to wrap your head around it we all want to thank them for their service so it is ironic people are thinking we for my service and people would thank me for it called the osama have said everyone assumes that we all have ptsd and have that old veteran experience and they assume if you are blown up points or blood weaken baghdad the were broken. Then there is a tendency to little soldiers as having been through it as if there was always a negative damaging experience to show and are okay. The war stays with all veterans their whole life but to assume everyone has been damaged is going too far. I think we have to apologize to the experience and then a disconnected and devotional goal is so great and they feel such a burden to give Something Back to veterans and ptsd is a gift to extend sympathy with the form of a psychiatric disorder that can somehow make up for the fact we sent you to war and you were screwed up the and you had to sacrifice a lot of your life for the steep fare wars. Is a coping mechanism that i have heard reid save when someone thinks you for your service their needs are met, not mine because they feel uncomfortable, a guilty so they say thank you for your service and ptsd is related to that. Did impede the more honest conversation. People think me and i am not debt combat veteran i served peacetime marine corps and it does make them feel uncomfortable but it is weird because it is easy to complain but i dont know what i want people to say except maybe nothing and lets have a conversation instead. If you are interested i will talk and tell your ears are blue but lets talk about the treaty how the middle east was the creation of a the map get into a dont just tell me through your bullet points what it was to you. If theyre willing to have been honest conversation palfrey doubt i was having it was quasi villages how much imus it i will talk about it all did that people get freaked out. Talking about rape or sexual abuse so i guess rather than taking me for my service then to take five minutes and just ask where were you what year and learn how the units work. But think of a different way to approach the topic. Her son was a rancher and dag capt. Of the army and shot and killed himself in 2004. Her memoir is out this year. You write to that he was despondent and reshape enraged. B z and went back to do the same job as a contractor. Then of course the contractor claimed that he worked for was bought by another and bought by another and a lot of happened that happens in the contracting business as well as in publishing. But, he went to ethiopia. He married in namibia and had a stepson and young daughter in the winter if hell be a for another operation. Then he was given the option by his company of going to washington are going to iraq. He went to iraq with fabulous, ecstatic enthusiasm. At that point he admired bush. He believed that wmd would be found. He believed the war was necessary, bought it all and he was there for only seven months but when he came home i feel that this one like that he had to stand on which was his belief in the military values, had been ripped from him. He was appalled at for example the disbanding of the Baathist Army and he had, if you look at it on paper, all of the symptoms of ptsd. He couldnt sleep. He was always aroused. He was sometimes distant, sometimes frightened, sometimes irrationally angry and so forth. What happened in his case and this is complicated but i will try to sanctify it. His wife after his suicide sued for benefits for her and the children. What the trial came down to us did he or did he not have ptsd. At which point it seemed to me this is not an answer to anything. This does not satisfy any need that any of us have to understand what happened to tam but that is what a courtroom does, and its very difficult to prove posthumous ptsd so there were a psychiatrist to look at the story and gave opposite answers to the question. And for six years my daughterinlaw pursued this through the courts with reviews and appeals and reviews and ultimately was denied benefits for her and the children because they couldnt properly say that he had ptsd. That experience was valuable to me in the way you are describing i think david because i understood that there are kinds of trouble and there are recognizable symptoms if you like of the trouble that happens in the minds of young men who go through an experience like this. But labeling it is not really very helpful. Jonathan shea who wrote two wonderful books about his work with Vietnam Veterans achilles in vietnam and odysseus in america, has come up with to his work with veterans has come up with the phrase moral injury. And that seems to me absolutely to describe what happened to my son. Attache describes it if you volunteer with great enthusiasm for the army and find yourself in a situation that you cannot then get out of because once you say yes you cant say partially know, and then you find that your superior officers are giving you orders that are in my sons words, stupid, greedy, wrong, what happens is a moral injury. It is an injury to that idealism with which he had and that phrase is my diamond fact glad i had written this book losing tim before i came across the phrase moral injury because i think i might have believed that was the answer that i was seeking what happened to my son. In your book you say when im writing about my son i have verbal planes at levels and tools to give me the illusion of control. As a writer you are trained to perceive and study your emotions. Im curious could you elaborate on that passage and tell us what the experience of losing a son under the circumstances, how am i be different for u. S. A writer as opposed to someone maybe with less of a habit of introspection or verbal facility . While the difference it made for me is that writing is what i do to make sense of any kind of chaos. Its instinctive and immediate and i do remember i dont remember much about the plane trip back from namibia where i buried my son but i do remember that i sat writing a furious letter to the nra, which then eventually was altered into the first essay that i wrote about him, which was published by the same people and it happens that christopher was on the staff at the st. Pete times at that point. But when i look back at it, it seems to me that the writing helps me in three different ways. One was that at first i just flashed out everything, the grave come, the anger and the loss in my journal. And then at some point i began to realize that i had been enormously helped by books that other people ive written about suicide, about depression, about soldiering and it began to seem to me that what i was doing in my journal was telling the story of my grief but i wasnt telling the story of my son, whereas my experience day by day was brief memory, brief memory, brief memory and there arose a new desire to tell his story which i know its not his story of his story. Its mine. He would not have told the story in the same way and he would not have come to the conclusions that i came to. But it was a way for me to try to understand through his life what had happened to him. You never come to an understanding. There comes a place that you can go no further as carson says that was the impulse toward the book. Those two things, to tell his story in a way that keeps him them, they keep them alive and in a way that might help other people. Curiously, and david morris and i were just talking about this. Curiously i find that now having written a memoir as close to the facts as i understand them as i possibly can, i am freed of the facts and now i am writing a play in changing characters and purposes in place and i feel quite free to use the emotions that are still in me in this very different way. Thank u. Thank you jenna. Along with the country lionizing veterans we have a pa system with serious shortcomings. The va backlog is already a joke on comedy central. Its wellknown that the battle for benefits goes on year after year. I am curious how you three would respond to the seeming contradiction between the fact that we lionize our best antiaccess david morris writes, the shortcomings in the va system seemed to show as a society we dont feel much responsibility for what happens to them when they return. I think if you go i wish next time we held a vote to declare war not the va hospital. I still go to the va hospital sometimes which has the largest concentration of iraq he afghan vets just to kind of soap in the history because you can go there and see world war ii vets world war i vets and vietnam vets and the whole thing. But it is, you know the va most people dont know is the second Largest Department in the u. S. Government. Its huge. We spend a lot of money on veterans. Not enough and i dont think i think its overly centralized and i think it suffers from not fully understanding and not being completely serious in the ways that it should be serious about dealing with people on a personal level. The biggest va in 2003 in 2004 in 2005 begin the new rollout of what they called Gold Standard treatments which are basically onesizefitsall mass produced therapies, prolonged exposures. Prolonged exposure and cbt which is more by talking therapy. And one of these prolonged exposures for example as a dropout rate of almost 60 am prolonged exposure which is the vas number one, they spent the most money on this therapy involves you describing your worst experiences not one time and not five times and not 10 times but ideally 100 times in a row. Virtual reality exposure therapy is a bigticket item. Usc was involved in a production of that technology which i think is completely foolish. I append their exposure therapy and it doesnt work. They have doubled down and spent money on these therapies that are questionable. They have very serious side effects a cause they needed to rollout and create a massproduced therapy in which tens of thousands of veterans and to be seen to be doing this in a way. Theres far less attention when i first went to the va all i wanted to do was talk to somebody that may be at a masters in psychology and is something about psychology. That never happened. I was put on a seven or eight month list. Good exposure therapy, hated it, and made my symptoms worsen at the end of it i said what can i do to see, just want to see what else is out there. Why do you put me back on the seventh month list. There are some very serious and smart people who work at the va some of the smartest most dedicated and innovative experienced counselors that treat ptsd come from the va. No one spends more in the entire world on ptsd Treatment Research and training and the United States veterans administration. They are the lead agency in the world for ptsd research and treatment. I just dont think, its not decentralized enough. I dont think we have enough qualified counselors are just basic counselors to talk to veterans and to do with them on the human level instead of getting this massproduced, its like they are producing what they think about weapons systems. Lets make make one that we can do 100,000 times in a row that will work for everybody. Its a really tough trying to solve the vas problems is Like Fighting a war all the time. You have to have a Campaign Plan and you have to have very smart people in it and you have to have a serious review process. I dont know why Eric Shinseki is still in charge of the va considering his poor track record that i dont know why they continue to use these therapies. Its odd because ptsd grew out of the antivietnam war that was heavily associated with the left with all of the people who opposed the vietnam war. The marine veteran played by tom cruise in born on the fourth of july. The va has become this orthodox. They have become a zen masters at ptsd and so they eventually dictate their research agenda. They dictate the public agenda and in my mind they have become a little bit fixed in their ways on how ptsd can be looked at in how its going to be treated as a public subject is largely dominated by the va. International organizations and the u. N. Communicates and looks to the va in large measure for leadership in ptsd research. We found ptsd research around the world in the netherlands and in london and in south africa and australia. We pay for their ptsd research because we have money. Anyone else care to comment about the golf . I would like to say the obvious thing which there is no va for the contractors although many of the contractors are like my son, recent veterans who go into the war sounds for the same reasons they went into the war to begin with. Rumsfelds idea was that in the privatization they would pay them very well and then they could cut them loose. So there was no briefing. There is no debriefing. There is no contact with the wives for the symptoms that they might look for. They are very well paid and being very wellpaid when they are working among soldiers. There is a natural tension. They are better paid than soldiers by far but they are cut loose. Thats all. If i can just widen it beyond the va. On one hand unlike other wars at least now there is some attempt at putting a system in place to offer Mental Health assistance to people who needed. Thats the other part. The thing that my reporting brought me to for this book was just you know the good intentions are one thing but on the other side of it, its an ad hoc haphazard system. Three quick examples from the book. One guy, three soldiers all who reached the point, all did well, came home and for various reasons finally worked up the courage to say they need help which is a whole nother story that they did and its a small window. They needed help so the first guy, he goes into a va run ptsd program in topeka kansas and he gets seven weeks. The next guy when its his he wants to go to the va program for seven weeks which is a long waiting list at this point. The caseworker looks around and she finally finds the fourweek program for him in colorado. This is a tried care run program. So okay, one guy gets seven weeks to work it out in one guy gets four weeks to work it out. Then along comes the guy was talking about earlier adam schuman. His moment arrives where its clear he needs help. The sevenweek program is full with a waiting list. Before the program is full with a waiting list family finds this little thing in Northern California thats not va and its not tried care. Its entirely donor supported. The guy who runs that says e he can come here but the deal is four months minimum and he stays as long as it takes to tear it apart and figure it out. Seven weeks, four weeks, at least four months and its where you go isnt dependent on your particular peculiar needs for recovery. It comes down to where there is nobody and i try awfully hard and i think i succeeded at keeping my own opinions out of these books. Theyre not my stories. They are the stories of the soldiers and families but i think its pretty fair to say that if i had a kid, who served them and came home and needed help and i learned that there were these three options available i would expect the very best for him. It seems like the least we could do but again everything is in the oven on the other hand. On the other hand a fourmonth program is not a broadscale workable model. Theyre just too many folks who need help right now to have a program like that. So what do you do . Apart from the time they spend in these programs which specific therapies seem to be the most effective among people that you followed to . Well so they relied a lot on cbt and lets return to the event just what david was talking about and own it and just replay it so it doesnt seem so dramatic that when it comes up its sort of smooth out and you can control the moment. What happened at the fourmonth program is that guy at the time and you may agree with this or you may not agree but at least have the time to do it, to take these folks and kind of take them well past their germanic moment, back toward his much they can remember as what happened before that moment or the accumulation of these moments. Go back to the beginning. Go back to your childhood. Not as excusing what they may have done and not that everything depends on the patterns of your life but his thinking seems to be if you can understand by learning about yourself enough to know who you were in a moment before the germanic event then you will have an easier time understanding how you behaved in the first controlled moments after the dramatic event and you might be more, maybe not forgiveness but at least understand. So that seemed in now is that perfect . No. But for whats available out there seemed like a pretty good shot. One quick note, interviewed a couple dozen ptsd survivors male, female war veterans rape survivors in one of the most powerful therapies as yoga as an alternative therapy because it helps change the hypervigilance associated with ptsd where you are always aroused and ready for an attacker. Soldier veterans suffer from that a lot. Hell got helps helps people be on an even keel with their body and lower the stress hormones, to a more stable centered state. The va is spending money on this and researching it at various va centers for a lot of eastern philosophy took part in mantra repetition city which is repeating a mantra which i didnt personally find effective at most of at most other at most of the at most other people to appear a lot of these alternative therapies which have nothing to do with Sigmund Freud were bf skinner or wearing it the classical cytological theories, they are kind of weird. The little strange to take a bunch of marine and say we are going to put your leg behind her head pretty doesnt go over particularly well at first but like california where yoga is particularly common. I have friends that teach in Twentynine Palms california and those are extraordinarily effective and we need to invest more in those. It seems kind of strange they are harder to sell on the floor of congress but yoga superpowerful. I know one victim for several hours that it saved her life. And she went through exposure therapy and it did nothing for her. I think you have to expand your definition of what therapy is basically. It just a little lightbulb over my head as david finkel was talking that for me no doubt the book ive written about tim is exactly the process you described, that i serwer this childhood and try to understand how the patterns of his life could have let him where they did. Of storytelling and theres a soul thought and i dont know whoever said it first said it far better. Im just going to jumble it but life basically is so absurd and chaotic anyway the only chance you have of making sense of it and living an optimistic life is to storified things. Take all these things and turn them into stories. Whether you are running writing a book or trying to understand her life. There are certain motives we have to get to gain control of it. I saw some value with some guys, not everybody but some value in but cpt was doing. The bigger problem i saw was just oh my god the over reliance on medication. There was one guy in my book and i hope this number is right. I think he was taking Something Like 40 pills a day. They werent all separate. It was a thing where you are depressed, take this one. You are still depressed . Take this one in addition to that one. Anxious . This is not news. But the overmedication was stunning and a lot of the reason for the overmedication is because of band or representation of people especially in areas where soldiers tend to come from. There is not an abundance of psychologists and social workers and therapists and qualified counselors able to help so guys show show up in a sale right here, take this pill, take this pill, take a spill. Im generalizing obviously but its a significant model. I think we have about 10 minutes left and i opened i would i promised i would open it up to audience questions. You never explained why to ptsd men. Posttraumatic stress disorder. As i understand ptsd as many Different Things but it is first and foremost a category, psychiatric disorder category involving intrusive syndrome, intrusive symptoms like flashbacks and hypervigilance were you are too switched on and expecting an attack in a moment and that can alternate with emotional numbing where you feel numbed out in the film nothing and there are about 18 different symptoms but those are the three basic symptoms areas. Intrusive symptoms which can include nightmares and flashbacks, hypervigilance and just being totally angry and waiting for an attacker and just being him doubt so thats how i understand it. You have to understand that its a long story but ptsd was invented basically in 1980 but it has a history that extends all the way back within human history. John shea the gentleman who wrote the forward for her book finds some of the symptoms and ptsd. It is in some ways kind have been immortal condition but it does tend to be inflected by the culture. Flashbacks great civil war veterans did not have flashbacks. They tended to report being haunted by ghosts though it was more of a supernatural reflection prior to film and television. Flashbacks as we call them kind of grew out of the film culture and the lsd culture of the 1970s because that is where ptsd came from. It came out of the Antiwar Movement on the left. Im just wondering what you thought about the fact that it seems like we have gotten away from the point where we think about the human cost of going to war and they dont take that into consideration. The wars obviously were kind of unavoidable come the two world wars and i remember growing up a lady whose husband came home from vietnam and i just remember it struck me when i started reading about the iraq veterans and every member of the thousand yard where he would sit in his chair and just stare at it struck me that it was like how did we forget this was happening to people when they came back for more and not be prepared . When we talk about human cost, it is one of those phrases that falls very easily into an account of the war without really thinking about what it is. One of the things that i think about is 22 veterans a day means 22 mothers today. So here is a way to think about it and forgive me if i am being obvious. These have not been popular wars and its not like a lot of americans have a particular stake in these wars. Its an allvolunteer force. Its a professional force now and you know the stats. Less than 1 of American Families have had somebody directly in these wars. So it means you go to neighborhood and knock on 99 doors, not here, not here. Its not like factories were being shut down to build mraps so guys wouldnt get blown up so much. These werent popular wars by professional force in a faraway country. You dont have to care and this is not a suggestion in any way from description. Its just to state the obvious. Its not how you forget about human cost . Its not just that. Nobodys thinking about the wa wars. A lot of people arent thinking about the wars very much at all so the human cost gets to be one of the casualties of that. I remember as a girl in phoenix arizona seeing gold stars in windows in the neighborhood and there were quite a few of them. One of the things that i did on memorial day after tim died was to make a big gold star and put it in a window. But you know that was a kind of sentimental thing to do. Sir. The other appalling appalling statistics ive hurt from these wars as the number of traumatic brain injuries. Im sure theres some overlap between that and post dramatic stress disorder. I would like to comment on how many tbis there are and give us a quick little in the time allotted background on that if you will. I dont feel actually qualified. He tbi you are correct in the sense that if you imagine two circles of symptoms the two circles overlap to a large degree in terms of the symptoms of ptsd and tbi. I think to be honest i think we are just now in the opening phases of a campaign of understanding what tbi really means because the brain is has more connections than÷ our stars in the known universe that we dont fully understand what happens when someone experiences it. I lived through two ied attacks. I dont know, didnt lose consciousness. They werent profound injuries so its hard to say what the longterm impacts impact of those are. Interestingly the researchers that i have spoken to look at the nfl as being a very useful and very analogous database. They look at locally and look at junior seau. He experienced concussion after concussion after concussion. One of the units i was in one of the sister units had people that generally have a four or ied rule. If you had three concussions, three register concussions they would send you home. So there is a think a general awareness of it. I dont think the neurology, think we are just getting into the basics of our understanding of it. Its almost like you know the Space Program in the 60s. We are just sorting out the fundamentals of what is at stake there. Interestingly one thing i would say is someone is seriously wonder theres this weird effect. If you you were going to do and you lose consciousness the likelihood of you getting ptsd drops by 50 so there something that happens in six hours after an attack that changes the way the memory is stored. Neuroscientists have a pretty good handle on that. So im kind of a paradoxical way if you suffer a fairly profound hermetic brain injury and lose consciousness psychologically you are in a slightly better position if that makes any sense. Im not sure how to describe it. Im not saying good for you, you have a tbi but it shows. We dont know why that is exactly but it shows how complicated and delicate a machine to mind is. I dont hope you can add to that david. There are some overlap. You are right. Of course there are more tbi cases and traumatic brain injury and a lot of it has to do with the fact that so many other people in wars who would be dead are not dead in these wars to these are low class. They tend to come up. You got your brain rattled in the lose consciousness for a bit and then you are rearranged. You have got some things that are chargeable to deal with. Its funny on the whole hierarch if these things i see guys with ptsd sort of wishing for tbi because at least there could be a brain scan to show look, heres proof. There actually is something physically wrong with me and guys with tbi so wish that they were missing a leg so they could say say oh look their sex was something wrong with me. I can believe this and all of that kind of gets back to the whole stigma of psychological wounds. Even if there something organic underneath it the inability for these rough and tough guys especially to first of all believe something may happen to them and then go forward from there. Yes, sir. A lot of the things you talk about in a shamanic event im curious in the majority of cases there is a traumatic event that it can be traced back to or it just develops and theres nothing you can attribute it to . That could be an accumulation of things. The shade term of moral injury. People are starting to pay more and more attention at that and thats not pretend this all makes us us on the military side of the equation. There is trauma in the civilian world as well. You guys might disagree but to me the commonality here is when something happens in your life whether its a single event or an accumulation of things but its not just trauma. Something happens that just rattles you down to your bones. You either succumb to it or you get busy trying to recover