Some studies show that people with PTSD have an increased suicide risk. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a type of anxiety disorder. PTSD is recognized as a psychobiological mental disorder than can affect survivors not only of combat experience, but also terrorist attacks, natural disasters, serious accidents, assault or abuse, or even sudden and major emotional losses. Each year in the U.S it’s a rough 8 million people who suffer from PTSD, and around 100 people commit suicide every day, all year round.
How PTSD relates to Slaughterhouse-Five is that Billy Pilgrim suffered tremendously from this disorder. Billy went into WW2 at such a young age and experienced many horrors of war. He has constant flashbacks of his time during war, he seen death, he was abused by his fellow soldiers, and he was mistreated. Everyone just thought he was losing his mind, mostly because of old age. They saw him as a danger to society at certain points.
More needs to be done to help people that suffer from PTSD. It’s better to get them help so their risk of committing suicide decreases and the chances of living a long healthy life increase. They can get more therapeutic, phycological, and prescription drug help. Keeping their troubles to themselves doesn’t help their mental and physical help at all.
Studies show that when people are treated with proper care when diagnosed with PTSD, they are more than likely to live a longer and healthier life than they would have if they were to just go on with their lives doing nothing to help themselves. When that person is not helped, they could easily isolate themselves, go into depression, have harmful intentions, some may say a danger to society, then they could eventually lead on to killing themselves.
Not all people can be helped in the same way such as how one may just need to take prescription drugs so they will no longer be on edge, or they could just get help from a shrink. Some people are just afraid of them in general, mostly from their sudden outburst of anger, surprise, and hostility.
Some people say that it’s pointless to help people with PTSD because they may never be cured. People seem to think that they are faking it, such as they thought with Billy Pilgrim. The amount of money spent to help people with their condition is over $94.9 million dollars a year. Also $23 billion a year for non-psychiatric direct medical costs, doctor and hospital visits. Some seem to think that it’s a waste of time and money. Much of the general public and many mental health professionals used to debate whether PTSD was a real disorder. Not everyone sees eye to eye when deciding if PTSD is a serious issue to be dealt with.
I still disagree with those thoughts and think we should help people that suffer from this condition. It’s not their fault that it happened to them and all they want is to be helped so it can go away, so who are we to reject someone’s cry for help. They also shouldn’t have to pay people to listen to their problems and what’s troubling them so they can get an answer to solve their problems, to tell them they will be fine. They should be given the help and care that they need so they can recover instead as just seeing them as some messed up person in our society. Just because some people fake this condition for attention, doesn’t mean every person is.
(PTSD Statistics) (Gardner) (Prevention) ((NIMH)) (Health) (Sidran) (Vonnegut)
