PTSD, High Toll on Marriages

[thedrifter]

February 23, 2003

Casualties of combat; The horrors of war exact a high toll on marriages when veterans come home, a new study finds

By BILL HENDRICK

It hasn't happened yet, but Charles Barnes knows it will, and there's nothing he can do to stop it. Edward "Ted" Toner, 19, of Sweetwater, Wyo., is going to die. Tonight.

He'll get blown out of a foxhole he shares with Barnes, who'll wake up screaming on a cold hill in Korea in a pool of warm blood from his own shrapnel wounds. And Toner will lie nearby in a crumpled heap, his left arm and right leg gone.

For the most part, Barnes, 75, of Stockbridge repressed that nightmare and other grim memories of the Korean War for nearly 50 years, shutting them out by working two or three jobs at once. But the experiences showed in other ways: Soon after donning his civvies, he became chronically anxious and a compulsive gambler, and he exhibited a simmering rage that "wasn't like me before." He often lost his temper "for no reason at all," which, he figures, is just one of the reasons his first two marriages failed.

If history is a guide, there will be many more joining him in the ranks of the divorced if America goes to war with Iraq, according to researchers at two major universities.

William Ruger of Brandeis University in Boston and Sven Wilson of Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, found in a new study that combat veterans are 62 percent more likely to divorce or separate than their civilian counterparts.

In an era when divorce was a badge of shame, Barnes felt like a failure and went through bouts of depression. A few years ago, his third wife suggested he see a doctor at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Decatur.

"They have fears of intimacy because of losing friends in combat," says Dr. David Baltzell, the VA psychiatrist and Emory professor who directs the center's post-traumatic stress disorder clinic. "Anger is a distraction. It's common for many of these men to become alcoholics to sleep," he says.

"They're often chronically irritable and don't want to let anybody get close to them for fear they might lose them like some of their buddies. And many can only cry in their dreams."

Barnes' third wife, Shirley, says the dreams about Toner, killed by mortar fire about 2 a.m. on Sept. 1, 1950, didn't start until after her husband retired. Barnes doesn't know what sets him off. Maybe the news. Maybe a familiar face.

All he and his wife know is that the dream will recur. Again. Always again.

"I had no earthly idea," she says. "Over the years he's always woke up in the night, yelling, crying, screaming things like 'they're after me.' For a while there, I thought I'd have to commit him. But all those years, 20 or so, he never discussed his friend until a few months ago. Now there's hardly a day that goes by that he doesn't talk about him."

Even though they married many years after his return from Korea, "his strange behavior didn't start right away and I didn't notice anything different for a real long time," she says. "Far as I was concerned, he was perfectly normal, and I guess he was. But it seems something made him snap, and it all came back to him sort of quick."

She adds: "He couldn't sleep, so I couldn't sleep. He got a bad temper. That upset me. I found out he was gambling so much we had to go bankrupt. I found out he had his own bank account, his own post office box. It's hard to have a good marriage with secrets, and that hurt."

Therapy revealed that other spouses faced the same painful problems. "Sometimes, I just feel helpless, so I go to a [therapy] class and it helps me understand because I know that other wives go through all this, too," she said.

'I'd bottle things up'

Since he returned from Vietnam, John Van Nus, 52, of Hiawassee figures he hasn't slept more than two or three hours at a time. Like Barnes, and the dozen or so Vietnam veterans in another therapy group, he figures the war killed his marriage.

"I'd bottle things up, then explode," says Van Nus, an artist who makes a living painting houses "because I can do it alone. That's been a problem. I get nervous in crowds. I tend to be real quiet. That got to my ex-wife. And so did my sleeping habits. I'd wake up talking, mostly swearing. It would just irritate her that I was acting strange."

His ex, Donna, who's now remarried, says it was his "aloofness" that got to her most. They were married from 1972 until 1990, and "it was just more than I could take. I couldn't get him to talk. I was married for 10 years before I knew he had a Bronze Star, and I only found out about that because I was going through some boxes and found it. We didn't have a good relationship then, but we do now."

His dreams are always the same. Fleeing people who are chasing him.

"I know that if I'd just have talked to my wife, we'd still be married."

Like Barnes, Van Nus, who drove a tank, dates his chronic anxiety to a specific date and name: April 18, 1969, and his friend Ed Morrow. "He got shot and fell down in the turret," Van Nus says. "I tried to help him, giving him air from my air hose because it was so hot, but there was nothing to do. Last thing he said was, 'Thanks, Peewee.' I see him hanging there like it's happening now."

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the crescendoing talk of war in the past year, the VA has seen a surge in the number of Vietnam, Korean War and World War II combat veterans seeking treatment for repressed traumas, says Dr. David Ready, the chief VA psychologist who counsels veterans suffering from the effects of combat.

"We're seeing more and more of the older guys," Ready says. "When they retire, they have more time to think."

The impact on relationships, though often delayed, can be profound, Ready says.

"Two or three marriages is not unusual for these men. It's usually the same. They don't like to get close to people. It hurts too much. . . . The older they get, the harder it is to keep it all stuffed away."

Memories of the stress of combat, which most men try to suppress, are often destructive, because men with "grief phobia" don't trust themselves to keep their emotions in check, so they withdraw, Ready says.

As a result, many combat vets become loners, bark orders to their wives and find ways to throw up a wall between themselves and anyone they love, Ready says.

"The wives find they're living with the 'ice man,' " he adds. "And they often blame themselves and even develop some of the same patterns of behavior. They try hard not to put too many demands on their relationship. This can lead to chronic irritability, which is very bad for any relationship."

About 860,000 veterans like Van Nus have been treated for post-traumatic stress disorder nationwide, and 100,000 have been deemed completely disabled. In the Atlanta area, 11,500 have been treated, and many more who have not sought treatment need help, Ready says.

Thousands studied

The recent study of the effects of combat on marriage utilized data on 13,000 men and compared divorce and separation rates of veterans who had seen combat with those who hadn't. Wilson and Ruger also analyzed men's marriages throughout most of the past century, including before, during and after World War II, Korea and Vietnam. Among the findings:

* Veterans of the Korean War were even more likely to divorce than their counterparts in the Vietnam era. Such veterans, whether in combat or not, were 45 percent more likely to divorce within 10 years than civilians, compared with 28 percent for those who saw service during the Vietnam War.

* While World War II veterans were 24 percent less likely to suffer marital dissolution than peers who didn't serve, their divorce rates did spike briefly after 1945.

"There is a notion that Korea was much like World War II, but that Vietnam really messed people up," Wilson says. "We find quite the opposite. It's true that Vietnam vets were getting divorced at high rates, but so was everyone else at the time."

To their surprise, the researchers found "a real sea change between World War II and Korea," Wilson says. "Starting in the '60s and continuing through the early '80s there was an unraveling of marriage and the social fabric in general. For veterans, it looks like this started much earlier than we would have anticipated."

A rocky road

That finding comes as no surprise to Lowell Chambers, 81, of Villa Rica, who took part in the Normandy invasions, was later captured and spent the rest of World War II in a POW camp. He's been married once, for 61 years, but it's been a rocky road at times.

"I still have nightmares," he says. "I've had drinking problems . . . I worked all the time. As long as I was working, I was too tired to think. At night, I'd wake up and my wife would be holding me down because I was jumping around."

He avoids war movies, documentaries --- anything that evokes memories of those days.

"I went to the VA and they sent me to Dr. Baltzell and Dr. Ready," Chambers says. "I thought I was nuts, all this coming back after all these years."

His wife, Nell, recalls, "We considered divorce, but then we'd think, what are we going to do with the kids? We had six, and he was a good father. But it was rough going."

He agrees. "It was tough, staying together, but back then, that's what you did."

Ferd Payne, 72, of Douglas County, a combat medic in Korea, tried hard, too, but he's now in his third marriage. The first lasted a year and a half, the second 15, but he's confident his third, now in its 22nd year, will hold.

"I just couldn't seem to get focused," he says. "I drank. There was verbal and physical abuse. The war probably was 90 percent of the reason for the divorces. I was angry and couldn't get the dead out of my head. . . . Now, they come back when I think of Iraq. I've seen enough young men dead. I'm against any war now."

Ginger Worley, a social worker at the VA, holds group therapy sessions for wives, "and these women went through hell. . . . It's clear it's been a struggle for them all. A lot of the women love their husbands but just can't handle it."

Simmering anger

Don White has been married four times since his return from Vietnam. The 53-year-old former state senator from Gwinnett County blames the failures on himself.

"I was in college when I got back [from Vietnam], and my first marriage lasted no time at all," he says. "I thought everything was fine in my second marriage, but I would still throw fits. I couldn't talk about it, and that just made me more angry. . . . She was outgoing, and I just wanted to stay home. I was a loner, and I knew something was up because I'd always been outgoing, one of the more popular guys."

His third wife, Brigitte Kristensen, 57, says she still cares for White, though his behavior came between them.

"Don wasn't so bad with the nightmares; it was more like daymares," says Kristensen, remarried and now a therapist who sometimes works with veterans. "He would shut himself off. You could see anger building up, and he'd talk really harshly. It's really a shame, because he's such a nice man, with a great sense of humor. He was just emotionally unavailable, and I've seen it with other vets I've counseled."

The memory he can't shake is the day Charles H. Turner Jr. died. He was an African-American and White's best friend, unusual in those days for a white teen raised in the country.

"We were friends and talked a lot, about crops, what kind of vegetables grew at home. We were making plans to get together when the war was over. I was in my tank, and Charles was crossing the road, and when my tank pulled out he looked at me, waving. Then I heard this explosion, and I just started getting sick, 'cause I knew it was Charles. I helped load him on the chopper. But then I found out he had died. I got this helpless feeling. And I still feel that way."

BY THE NUMBERS
First marriages of combat veterans are 62 percent more likely to fail than those of non-veterans.
Korean War vets, whether in combat or not, were 45 percent more likely than civilians to divorce within 10 years.
Vietnam War vets were 28 percent more likely than civilians to divorce within 10 years.
World War II veterans were 24 percent less likely to divorce than their peers who didn't serve.
Source: Armed Forces & Society.

'HELPING US DEAL WITH THE RAGE'
It's group therapy day at the VA Medical Center in Decatur, and five Vietnam combat veterans at a big conference table are telling their often horrid stories to Dr. David Ready, a psychologist who counsels men with post-traumatic stress disorder.
All --- like Chuck Shephard, 57, of Kennesaw --- have been divorced. All --- like former state Sen. Don White, who's been married four times --- blame their divorces on the combat they saw. All --- like Lynus Rankins, 53, of Eatonton --- appear angry and anxious. All --- like John Van Nus, 52, of Hiawassee --- are stoic and cautious, afraid to let their emotions show.
But talking about their combat days, though painful, is a necessary step in helping them deal with PTSD, a debilitating condition that often leads to alcoholism, chronic anger, insomnia, nightmares, unstable marriages and an inability to hold down a job.
James Cobb, 56, of Snellville appears shell-shocked. Divorced after 34 years, he says group therapy has made him feel better. But he's still "irritable, on edge and isolated. And I still wake up with night sweats."
Rankins, divorced twice, long struggled with alcohol and drugs but is sober now.
"I remember one time, seeing the head of an American," he says. "Just the head. It's hard to get that out of your mind."
Ready says therapy and medication have changed the lives of thousands of veterans, and that post-traumatic stress illness is as real as cancer. That wasn't recognized until more than two decades after Vietnam.
"You're always thinking about it," says Shephard, a former Marine. "This is helping us cope, helping us deal with the rage."
Ready says at least 11,500 Vietnam vets in the Atlanta area have received treatment for PTSD, but that "there is a great under-served population out there."
--- Bill Hendrick
ON THE WEB

* National Center for PTSD: www.ncptsd.org

* National Institute of Mental Health Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: www.nimh.nih.gov/anxiety/ptsdmenu.cfm


Sempers,

Roger

United We Stand
God Bless America

Remember our POW/MIA's
I'll never forget!

[BilltheCat]

I was reading and found this:

"Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the crescendoing talk of war in the past year, the VA has seen a surge in the number of Vietnam, Korean War and World War II combat veterans seeking treatment for repressed traumas, says Dr. David Ready, the chief VA psychologist who counsels veterans suffering from the effects of combat"


I may be slow but I didnt know anyone else had a problem like this. I actually thought I was the only one. Thank you for this post. I have just sucked it up and gone silent. wrong move I guess. I just didnt think anyone would understand.

[SEATJERKER]

..Daymares caught my eye,...

...Is that the term for underlying moments of "incurred at present semi trauma" that sets you off during awake hours,...

...

[sfc_darrel]

VA treatment helps.
Darrel

[BilltheCat]

I wish I had any faith left in the VA. I do not. I have been thru all manner of fowl ups, clusters, and sorry treatment. In the end I decided I had more respect for myself than to trust the miserable excuse for medical help in Orlando.

The VA took my condition and gave it a 10%. Every Dr I ever talked to and every one else said 50% at least. but the VA says nope. NO reason, just nope. It is not a medical decision you know, or a decision based on thier promise. It is a financial decision only.

I am a cost cutting measure. The VA would be more on the Vets side if it were staffed by North Vietnamese.