Dr. John A. KingIndigenous Australian. 100% Human. Neo-Noir Novelist. Poet. Speaker. Performance coach. More than a Survivor. Terrible Golfer, Awkward Dancer🕺

Veterans, Suicide and Childhood Abuse

2 Mar 2018 · 1 min

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This content was created by Dr. John A. King. This content was uploaded by Dr. John A. King. This is a YouTube video titled "Veterans, Suicide and Childhood Abuse" (posted 2018-03-02) containing an excerpt in which Dr. John A. King speaks about his work with veterans. He recounts an anecdote about a veteran who, after 20 years of service, returned home and died by suicide because unresolved childhood sexual abuse on the family farm had not been addressed. Dr. King emphasizes that treating PTSD symptoms alone is insufficient and stresses the need to acknowledge and work through deeper layers of trauma to reach root causes.

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I do a lot of work with veterans, and I was sitting with a mate and we were having a chat about a horrible story that he, that he was sharing with me. He talked about a friend of his who did 20 years, came back, and on his first day out killed himself. The reason was that he was heading back to the family farm, and that family farm had been the scene of horrible sexual abuse as a young man, and he never shared about it. They were trying to deal with PTSD on one level, but they weren't addressing the trauma on another. So many of the elite veterans that I've spoken with went into the military because they wanted to protect themselves and their family from all of the trauma and the danger that they went through as young men. If we're not prepared to address every one of those layers, be open and vulnerable about it, then there's no way that we're ever going to address the real root cause, you cannot deal just with the symptoms. You've got to get to the heart of the matter.