My father had PTSD. He was part of the invading force that was trapped on the Anzio beachhead and was shelled for 60 days. Finally he was walking across a field. The Germans spotted him and the first shell missed. He dived to the ground and wrapped his right arm around his head. The second shell hit so close to his head the it blew the entire lower bone (ulna) of his forearm off. Prior to the way he was very strong and athletic. He told me a college scout saw him skate and offered him a football scholarship. He wanted to be a New York City detective. Those dreams disappeared at Anzio.
PTSD was first described in 1980. We lived in a small town. My father was a violent and abusive alcoholic. For about 40 years, our community and my family thought my father was just weak. He had no self-control. He worked delivering soft drinks and repairing televisions, but he never realized his potential. Finally, a physiatrist diagnosed his PTSD. He told my mother: “You think he is weak. You think he can fix himself. He can’t. You have no idea what he has been through. He self-medicates with alcohol to help him cope.” My father finally got professional help. He stopped drinking but not before he was robbed of his potential.
There are entire zip codes in the United States where thousand of children grow up with adverse childhood events and PTSD: The linked article from the New England Journal describes the “challenges faced by such chronically traumatized young people. They are unlike children and adolescents who’ve had only one bad day caused by gun violence, who are typically inundated with “psychological first aid” and therapeutic interventions. Rarely do the young people in “war-zone” neighborhoods receive substantial mental health support — most essentially, trauma-informed psychotherapy — as they undergo post-traumatic stress development. They are left largely on their own, and any “therapy of reassurance” is not credible: it does no good to tell them “It’s OK, things are back to normal,” because “normal” is the problem.”
“in the neighborhoods where community violence flourished, 63% of elementary school children reported having witnessed a shooting. Their level of exposure, in other words, was the same as that in Lebanon and among Palestinian children during the peak years of political violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip — hence the characterization of these U.S. neighborhoods as war zones. Such high exposure results in a worldview in which community violence is normal. But this normalization can lead to hypersensitivity to threat and validation for preemptive assault — what I have termed the war-zone mentality. Through this process, traumatized young people (mostly boys) become “child soldiers.” The larger context in their communities, which often includes poverty, racism, cultural support for extreme corporal punishment (beating of children), and a history of armed street gangs, disproportionately predisposes them to perpetrate gun violence themselves.”
There are entire families in this country with an unbroken line of adverse childhood and PTSD going back to the day when they were kidnapped in Africa 500 years ago. We wasted my father because we did not understand. There is no excuse for wasting generations of black and brown kids. We have no idea what they have been through. Many of them are like my father. They cannot help themselves. Helping them deal with the adverse childhood events and PTSD will help every American. It makes more sense to help them cope with PTSD and provide good education than spending billions to repeatedly incarcerate them.
Thanks for raising this very important subject area. Unfortunately, instead of helping, I see a lot of our institutions (educational, medical [e.g over prescribing and over pathologizing], fear mongering by news and social media, politics) are making things worse for the kids, and are doing some of the traumatizing. So I am with you that more trauma informed services are sorely needed. [here is my own article about what I learned about ACEs etc. through my own journey of recovery https://garysharpe.substack.com/p/adverse-experiences-stressful-episodes ]
Heart wrenching story Bill. I grew up in the Bronx NY in the 60's and even as a youngster saw the plight of these war zones begin to develop with the construction of housing "projects". So awful to see these neighborhoods now after decades of further decay. Now just imagine now if the major payers directed even a small percent of their outrageous profits to reconstructing neighborhoods and families? I would actually regain a modicum of respect for this display of capitalism.