Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder (PTSD) is a mental health problem that can occur after a traumatic event like war. What led me to thinking about this topic PTSD, was from the book “Slaughterhouse-five” written by Kurt Vonnegut. In this book there is a character named Billy was in the military. Billy saw a lot of people die while fighting in the military. When Billy came out of the war, you could tell he had the symptoms of PTSD and suffered from PTSD. Because of this illness he traveled back in time to find and get his life back. While reading this book I have noticed that PTSD is not a good thing and should be addressed.
People who have PTSD should receive special treatment and benefits. I think that PTSD should be treated because it’s a mental issue and in “slaughterhouse-five” you could see that Billy Pilgrim was really affected by this illness. An estimated 70 percent of adults in the United States have experienced a traumatic event at least once in their lives and up to 20 percent of these people go on to develop post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. An estimated 5 percent of Americans, that is more than 13 million people that have PTSD at any given time. Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder (PTSD) is a mental health problem that can occur after a traumatic event like war. (mayoclinic.org)
People can argue over if they should be given special treatments and benefits. Some people don’t think that veterans shouldn’t be given special benefits and treatments. People believe this because these benefits can cost a lot of money. People also believe that this mental illness, PTSD, is not curable and these treatments aren’t helping them at all. This is wrong because these treatments that these veterans are getting are not expensive and do really help veterans mentally. These treatments help 60% of veterans, which is better than helping none. (Counseling.org). in the Novel “Slaughterhouse-five” there was no treatment for PTSD so Billy Pilgrim had to struggle with having PTSD.
PTSD is a real issue. A lot of people are affected by this mental health problem. People with PTSD need someone to help to help them overcome their mental health. Because of this people who have PTSD should receive special treatments and benefits. Billy in “slaughterhouse-five” had to help himself getting past his PTSD. With treatment in Billy’s life things would be different.
