Independent filmmaker Karen van Vuuren has produced a documentary that clearly shows that spiritual damage is a major part of post-traumatic stress disorder. That reality, unfortunately, is not yet recognized by most of the medical community.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople have talked about PTSD as a brain injury, but I see it as a soul wound. And unless this is addressed as a soul injury, real healing is not possible,\u201d van Vuuren told me this week from her home in Boulder, Colo.<\/p>\n
\u201cGo in Peace\u201d was largely filmed in a soldiers\u2019 home in Sandusky, Ohio, watching as hospice therapists tried to help aging vets suffering from PTSD put their lives in order during their final days.<\/p>\n
In addition to some moving interviews with vets who talked about the pain, loss, grief and guilt that they experienced in combat, the documentary features two expert commentators: Dr. Ed Tick, founder of the non-profit Soldier\u2019s Heart and author of \u201cWar and the Soul,\u201d and advanced registered nurse practitioner Deborah Grassman, co-founder of project Soul Injury and author of \u201cPeace at Last.\u201d<\/p>\n
Together, they talk about the causes of PTSD, which Tick has re-named \u201cpost-terror soul distress.\u201d<\/p>\n
One central conclusion is that soldiers are forced to take actions in combat so contrary to their own core values that they lose their sense of identity. That forces them later to try to construct a new, positive identity, one that includes their previous experiences.<\/p>\n
But Grassman points out that most soldiers fight for two things: cause and comrades. Ever since Vietnam, many soldiers have felt there was no good reason to be fighting someone else\u2019s civil war in a foreign country. And most of them have lost some of their comrades in combat and feel guilty that they came home when the buddy they were supposed to be looking out for didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Therein lies the problem, according to \u201cGo in Peace.\u201d To heal, a vet has to want to heal, and many feel they don\u2019t deserve it.<\/p>\n
The solution in many cultures involves purification rituals that allow vets to rejoin society again without stigma. Vets need to forgive themselves, and that frequently involves redemption and atonement by doing something to make the world a better place.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a neat summary of what I\u2019ve come to call the \u201cwounded soul syndrome,\u201d which has not yet been recognized by the medical community as a major component of PTSD \u2013 but which should be.<\/p>\n
\u201cGo in Peace\u201d also addresses the isolation that many vets experience because they feel they can\u2019t talk about what they\u2019ve been through and what they\u2019ve done. In reality, the film says, that\u2019s because society has turned its back on the vets, not having the strength to listen to what they so badly need to say.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a culture, we don\u2019t want to know what these vets have been through,\u201d notes van Vuuren. \u201cAnd they recognize that we don\u2019t want to know so they don\u2019t want to tell us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Van Vuuren credits her father Jack as being the inspiration of her film. A World War II vet who suffered all his adult life with undiagnosed and untreated PTSD, Jack told his daughter in his final days that at age 14, he and a friend had strangled a Nazi soldier in their village in occupied Holland before fleeing to join the Allied forces.<\/p>\n