The incidence of domestic violence in America has reached catastrophic levels, and most of the nation is in denial about the root causes, despite the evidence all around us. In 1996 a large-scale study of 5877 Americans revealed that 10.5% of women and 6% of men have qualified in their lifetimes for a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This is a massive problem for our society and our churches.
PTSD is a mental disorder caused by a psychologically traumatic event or events of a severity or duration that is generally outside the range of normal human experience. Traumas that can cause PTSD include physical, sexual or emotional abuse, natural disasters or violent acts such as rape, murder, grotesque injury or death. Any of these can induce the syndrome in victims, perpetrators and even innocent observers of the violence. The potentially traumatic events, and the delayed psychological manifestations, are many and varied.
Guilt, depression and suicidality associated with being a survivor of violence are common, as are anxiety and personality disturbances. Re-experiencing the original trauma in the form of daytime flashbacks, nightmares or intrusive memories are hallmarks of the disorder. And the abuse of drugs in the victims of violence is legendary and usually represents an effort to assuage the mental anguish that results from the recurring, intrusive memory.
PTSD has been best studied in the veterans of the Vietnam War. These soldiers came home, devastated by the brutal effects of combat: the horror of having to kill or be killed and the multitude of atrocities witnessed or perpetrated. They were greeted by universal hostility from all segments of society, from the American Legion (who reviled them for having lost a war) to the anti-war activists (who saw them as the only visible symbol of "the overwhelming atrocity that was Vietnam" -- Thomas Merton's phrase). The genuine guilty parties, of course, were safely hidden in the warrooms of the Pentagon, the big business boardrooms of the war profiteers, the halls of Congress and the Oval Office.
Soldiers and their intentional or accidental victims (in the war zone and back home) usually exhibit the earliest psychological manifestations of war. But, for the soldier, the process starts during the preparation for war. Coercing civilians to become trained professional killers in the "virtual reality" of basic training requires a deadly assault on the psychological and spiritual makeup of each recruit. And in Vietnam, in order to effectively prosecute that war, the fighting forces had to disobey virtually all of the Ten Commandments, starting with "Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me" and "Thou Shalt Not Kill." And of course none of the precepts of the so-called Christian Just War Theory were met.
It has been calculated that 20% of all Vietnam theatre vets, including over 50% of the combat vets, developed classical PTSD. The most comprehensive study of the Vietnam War, the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study (NVVRS), revealed that 480,000 American vets developed the full-blown syndrome, with another 300,000 developing partial PTSD, both diagnoses utterly catastrophic for the individuals, their families and society. These veterans were released from combat immediately after their tour, often going from the terror of guerilla warfare to an oblivious home front within 48 hours. An unsuspecting society and its confused families were suddenly accosted with large numbers of chemical abusers, psychological cripples with hair-trigger fuses, who resented the lack of understanding and interest in the hell that was still fresh in their minds. The results were devastating, and the consequences continue today in a multitude of unappreciated ways.
Powerful militaristic societies have lamented the collapse of family values since time immemorial. The Roman Empire and Hitler's Third Reich were among them. Our current American version is likewise happening because of the violence to society that our brand of militarism has inflicted upon us. The very warrior mentality that was supposed to have saved us from foreign influences is now destroying us from within.
Jesus said, "he who lives by the sword dies by the sword." 58,000 American soldiers died in Vietnam and more than that number, perhaps as many as 200,000, have committed suicide since their discharges, confirming the truth of that radical gospel message. But PTSD-affected combat veterans who "survived" also meet my definition of "dying by the sword," especially those hundreds of thousands who are suffering the recurrent horror of the malignant memories of gruesome death and dying.
Military violence is taught with a vengeance in basic training and practiced without mercy on the battlefield. And it spreads rapidly from the warrior to the military spouses and the children. The epidemic of domestic violence among military families is legendary: with high rates of marital failure, addictive disorders, and physical, emotional and sexual abuse. This should not puzzle us, for people become what they see and do and believe in, and people who choose vocations of violence have enormous difficulty being loving, nurturing and compassionate human beings in their domestic lives.
For the last two generations, America has been a massively militarized society. We taxpayers unquestioningly support a large and unaffordable standing army. For the past two generations, massive investments have been made in our military bureaucracies that are trained to wield weapons of mass destruction -- mostly targeting civilian population centers. Tens and tens of millions of soldiers have been trained during this time to make murder for the state. This learned violence takes tremendous energy to overcome completely and therefore spreads as contagion. And it is a sad fact that on average, every PTSD-affected Vietnam combat veteran psychologically traumatized 4 other people, usually family members, who are then capable of traumatizing others in the next generation, mostly their spouses and innocent children. And so it goes, spreading in exponential fashion, through the generations until we find ourselves in an epidemic that we blindly refuse to blame on our country's military, domestic and foreign policies.
The huge incidence of violence-induced mental ill health and criminality that is occurring in America shouldn't surprise us. That large numbers of young people with personality disorders, addictive disorders and criminal disorders are clogging the courts and psych units shouldn't surprise us. That there are large numbers of troubled marriages, troubled children, violent streets and violent homes shouldn't surprise us. That we have generated short-sighted, reactionary political leaders who push for building more self-defeating, violence-promoting prisons, harsher penal codes and more deadly weapons shouldn't surprise us. It should outrage us, however, that these leaders are also squeezing out every program of social uplift that could do something about the these real destroyers of family values: poverty, racism, bigotry, xenophobia, homophobia, underemployment, unaffordable health care and inadequate housing.
And this is where the church comes in. Proclaiming boldly and repeatedly what Jesus proclaimed about the attainment of the peaceable Kingdom should be job 1 for every church, every bishop, every clergyperson and every layperson. Teaching gospel nonviolence (the unconditional love of friend, neighbor and enemy) and incarnating that in the lives of the disciples by offering mercy to all the children of God is the way of Jesus. This must also, according to New Testament ethics, include the enemy of the state, who is not the enemy of God but rather a child of God who is loved by God and who is therefore to be loved by those who follow the God of mercy as revealed by Jesus. "Put up the sword," "love your enemies" and "thou shalt not kill" were not throwaway lines.
The above gospel truths are part of the Peace Plan of God, as revealed by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount and confirmed again and again by his words and actions during his healing ministry. When Jesus healed the ear of the enemy who was going to take him to his death; when he forgave his executioner-enemies from the cross; and when he offered his unconditional forgiveness to the death-row criminal at his side, he was placing an exclamation point on the Peace Plan. And the church ignores it at its eternal peril.
The church is long past overdue in teaching and living Jesus' clear message of gospel nonviolence. It must be taught now from the pulpits, the Sunday Schools and the seminaries. It must be lived in the workplace, in the home, in the House and Senate and as an act of resistance in front of military recruiting stations everywhere. The fate of our families depends on it, as do the souls and psyches of humanity's sons and daughters, not just in America but all over the world.
Where there is cruelty, there is the satanic, and where there is mercy, there is the Christ.
And within that statement of gospel truth lie the clues to the prevention and the treatment of PTSD.
© Gary G. Kohls, MD, 1306 E.8th St., Duluth, MN 55805 Ph/fax (218) 728-9756, email: gkohls@cpinternet.com, Midwest Coordinator for Every Church A Peace Church (http://www.ecapc.org).