Subtopic #4: Veteran Affairs
Mental Health (PTSD)
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental health condition when one has experienced or witnessed a life threatening trauma. In 1989 Baker reported that nurses coming in to the Vietnam war with less than 2 years of clinical experience were more likely to have ptsd than nurses who had previous experience. 25% of the people who served in the war have experienced psychological care. PTSD became official in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in the 1980’s. Some of the soldiers experienced PTSD later than others. Certain things trigger them whether its people or places and they start to have flashbacks about the traumatic things they experienced during the war. According to the national Vietnam veterans readjustment study, 31% of them men who fought in Vietnam had experienced some PTSD. A study in 2013 said that 1 in 10 veterans who served in Vietnam didn’t experience ptsd symptoms until 4 decades later. Dr. Wirick said that 52% of the veterans who participated in their study said that they have nightmares frequently.
Drug use among soldiers
The use of drugs among the soldiers started before the Vietnam war. In 1971 John Murphy and Robert Steele released a reporting stating that 15% of the soldiers in Vietnam were addicted to heroin. If anyone caught using illicit drugs they were subject to court martial and dishonorable discharge from the service. The soldiers that were willing to seek help might be able to receive brief treatment as well as amnesty. In June of 1971 Nixon announced the formation of Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention (SAODAP). One of the first things they did was evaluate the new drug policy for the military. Dr. Lee Robins of Washington University in St. Lous was asked by the SAODAP to get the records form the Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration for their study. Heroin and Opium were so cheap that the soldiers got ample effect by smoking heroin with tobacco or marijuana together. In 1971 almost half of the men enlisted had tried opiates. Out of the men who tried it, half of them were starting to become addicted to them. Marijuana was more common than heroin was because 2/3 of the soldiers were using it.
Women in Vietnam
Women were nurses and volunteers during the Vietnam war. They had navy nurses on hospital ships. There were nurses assigned to hospitals as well as flight nurses. The nurses n the navy ships cared for the wounded who were flown from the battle front. These nurses served for 90 days before getting to leave. The women who were apart of the WACs saw the worst injuries and they were close to the battle sites. The women who served had no weapon training or experience. Also women were able to join the army, navy, or Air Force with a small chance of getting paid. The women who served when they got home were not seen as heroes unlike in WWII. This was because of the lack of public approval for the US entering this conflict. Women worked as close and some were on the front line. 67 women were killed during the war and 8 of them were military nurses. 90% of the women in Vietnam were nurses and the other 10% were volunteers. Also our women were sent to train the Vietnamese women so they knew what to do when things started getting ugly.
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https://nvf.org/vietnam-women-veterans/
http://www.virtualwall.org/women.htm
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5047000/
Char, J. (1972). Drug abuse in Vietnam. American Journal of Psychiatry, 129 (4), 123-125.
Robins, L. N., Helzer, J. E., & Davis, D. H. (1975). Narcotic use in Southeast Asia and afterward: An interview study of 898 Vietnam returnees. Archives of General Psychiatry, 32 (8), 955-961.
Robins, L. N., Helzer, J. E., Hesselbrock, M., & Wish, E. (1980). Vietnam veterans three years after Vietnam: How our study changed our view of heroin. In L. Brill and C. Winick (Eds.), Yearbook of substance use and abuse. New York: Human Science Press.
Roffman, R. A., & Sapol, E. (1970). Marijuana in Vietnam: A survey of use among Army enlisted men in the two Southern corps. International Journal of the Addictions, 5 (1), 1-42.
https://counseling.northwestern.edu/blog/addressing-PTSD-among-older-combat-veterans/
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