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How Common Is PTSD Among Veterans?The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs reports that incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder among veteran varies depending on which conflict a service member was involved with.About 11 to 20 out of every 100 veterans (or between 11 and 20%) who served in operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom have PTSD in a given year.About 12 out of every 100 Gulf War Veterans (or 12%) have PTSD in a given year.About 15 out of every 100 Vietnam veterans (15%) were currently diagnosed with PTSD when the most recent study of them (the National Vietnam Veteran Readjustment Study) was conducted in the late 1980s. It’s believed that 30% of Vietnam veterans have had PTSD in their lifetime.Yeager says that these statistics tell us a lot about the conflicts they come from. For example, these populations may have higher rates of PTSD than veterans returning from World War I and World War II in part because the nature of warfare has changed significantly since the mid-20th century, and there are new pressures and challenges more recent veterans experience. “They aren’t retuning with a unanimous victory,” such as WWI and WWII vets did, “and with each subsequent group – Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf war, OEF, OIF – there were fewer and fewer individuals who experienced active combat.” This means a smaller pool of people who can relate to the returning veterans’ experiences. “We have a volunteer army, which is a good thing, but it’s also a bad thing in that people don’t have a lot of people to relate to. They don’t have many people to speak to about their experiences, and so when they come back, they’re more hyper-vigilant, they have trouble trusting, they attempt to control situations, they shut down and become less open and have less intimacy just in conversations with others, because others can’t really understand what they’ve been through,” Yeager explains.In addition, simple speed of travel these days may also be working against some veterans’ natural resiliency – after the World Wars, it just plain took longer to get home. “A lot of these soldiers returned on ships, and they had more time to decompress from where they had been to their return home. They had time to write letters. They had time to process through things,” and they were likely surrounded by other soldiers who’d had very similar experiences. They could spend time talking to each other and working through what they’d witnessed. “I don’t know if that makes a remarkable difference or not, but I think it’s a very different situation from the OEF and the OIF veterans who get on a plane and are back in the US within 48 to 72 hours. It’s pretty remarkable.”Another issue facing many veterans is that they come home to high-stress jobs that continue to put them in the line of fire. “Many of our current law enforcement and police and fire fighters are veterans. They’re continuing in a wonderful tradition of giving to society and helping society, but also in a way that is remarkably difficult, with its own challenges for PTSD.” The rules of engagement for law enforcement and emergency personnel are different from those of war, and sometimes “it’s very difficult to know what’s appropriate and what’s not. What was appropriate in one setting might not be in another,” and that can lead to further stress for some people.Sadly, the worst outcome of PTSD, namely suicide, is also increasing among veterans. The VA reports that there were more than 6,000 veteran suicides each year from 2008 through 2016, and from 2005 to 2016, veteran and non-veteran adult suicide rates increased 25.9% and 20.6% respectively. “In 2016, the suicide rate was 1.5 times greater for veterans than for non-veteran adults, after adjusting for age and gender.”These troubling statistics point to another complication of life after war for veterans – a lack of support and connection to others, Yeager says. “The whole idea of the band of brothers is a very real neurophysiological situation. You never feel more alive or more connected with people than you do when you’re in that combat field and I think for many vets combing back who’ve had their neurotransmitters firing at a very high rate, they struggle with ‘how do I find this again? Where can I get this kind of feeling alive?’”The heightened danger of living in a combat zone leads to a release of many powerful hormones and chemicals in the brain and body, causing powerful changes to the brain and how people respond to everything. “It’s not just a change to their thought process. It also involves cortisol levels, hormone stress responses, blood pressure responses, heart rate increases and other hormones that are released like oxytocin, which is widely touted as the hug neurotransmitter. When you have oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin all working at very high levels, the individual feels very connected to their combat buddies, which they should be. But when they return home, that’s absent and it’s missed and it can very quickly then lead to issues of depression. It can very quickly lead to feelings of isolation that one doesn’t fit in,” and some people will try to fill that void with fast cars, alcohol, substance abuse or other potentially dangerous or self-destructive activities. “They want that adrenaline rush again,” Yeager explains.https://health.usnews.com/conditions/mental-health/ptsd/articles/ptsd-veterans-statistics