Dr. John A. King discusses a veteran's death from untreated PTSD and warns that people are withdrawing from mental health conversations when they need them most. His book reaches more trauma survivors than the VA does. He argues open dialogue is essential to strip away shame and help people see PTSD as a manageable condition, not a sign of weakness.
Hey, this is my favourite going out in public t-shirt. You can get this from the website. Let's tick some people off. What happened in California was horrible. The lives lost, the young man who, a veteran who felt he couldn't get help or didn't have help. And we get reports from this all the time, how The Deal with It book is helping more people than the VA has been able to. Unfortunately, what I'm finding is that people with post-traumatic stress are now pulling back from the conversation. Whereas this is when we need to push into the conversation. We're not all going to go postal. And if we're going to hide and suppress a conversation about mental illness and something like post-traumatic stress with the amount of veterans that are coming back and the amount of trauma people in our communities, we're going to have more issues, not less. I believe we need to get on our front foot and take the shame and stigma away from dealing with something that is mental illness and having brave, open, and honest conversations so that people know we're not crazy. We just manage something on a daily basis that they don't.
