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Signature wounds : the untold story of the military's mental health crisis
Author
Title
Signature wounds : the untold story of the military's mental health crisis / David Kieran.
ISBN
9781479892365
147989236X
Publication
New York : New York University Press, [2019]
Physical Description
viii, 403 pages ; 24 cm
Summary
""Signature Wounds: The Untold Story of the Military's Mental Health Crisis" explores the topic of mental illness in the military. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have taken a tremendous toll on the mental health of our troops. In 2005, then-Senator Barack Obama took to the Senate floor to tell his colleagues that "many of our injured soldiers are returning from Iraq with traumatic brain injury," which doctors were calling the "signature wound" of the Iraq War. Alarming stories of veterans taking their own lives raised a host of vital questions: Why hadn't the military been better prepared to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI)? Why were troops being denied care and sent back to Iraq? Why weren't the Army and the VA doing more to address these issues? Drawing on previously unreleased documents and oral histories, David Kieran tells the broad and nuanced story of the Army's efforts to understand and address these issues, challenging the popular media view that the Iraq War was mismanaged by a callous military unwilling to address the human toll of the wars. The story of mental health during this war is the story of how different groups--soldiers, veterans and their families, anti-war politicians, researchers and clinicians, and military leaders--approached these issues from different perspectives and with different agendas. It is the story of how the advancement of medical knowledge moves at a different pace than the needs of an Army at war, and it is the story of how medical conditions intersect with larger political questions about militarism and foreign policy. This book shows how PTSD, TBI, and suicide became the signature wounds of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, how they prompted change within the Army itself, and how mental health became a factor in the debates about the impact of these conflicts on US culture."-- Provided by publisher.
Format
Books
Language
English
Added to Catalog
February 24, 2020
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents
Introduction : "these unseen wounds cut deep"
"At the time people hadn't been asking those sorts of questions" : Army mental health research between Vietnam and Iraq
"This was a different war" : mental health as crisis and enigma amid growing opposition to the Iraq War
"Callous disregard of veterans' rights is of a piece with the administration's entire approach to war" : veteran suicide and anti-war sentiment
"The culture of the Army wasn't ready" : stigma, access, and the politics of organizational change
"Military families are quietly coming apart at the seams" : managing family mental health and critiquing the Iraq War
"The limited science of the brain" : traumatic brain injury and scientific uncertainty during wartime
"Leaders can once again determine the kind of culture the Army is building" : active duty suicide and anxiety over Army culture
"The challenge to the VA is execution and implementation" : VA suicide prevention in a moment of mistrust
Conclusion : "they will start to bring the... lessons that they learned back into their communities" : comprehensive soldier and family fitness, the resiliency debate, and the future of mental health in the Army and America.
Subjects
Subjects (Medical)
Combat Disorders - psychology.
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