Trauma doesn't just affect the person who originally experienced it. It can also be passed down to their children and grandchildren.
05:03 min
CLEAR ALL
Winner of a 2019 Foreword INDIES Silver Book of the Year Award After serving in a scout-sniper platoon in Mosul, Tom Voss came home carrying invisible wounds of war—the memory of doing or witnessing things that went against his fundamental beliefs.
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Movies like American Sniper and The Hurt Locker hint at the inner scars our soldiers incur during service in a war zone. The moral dimensions of their psychological injuries—guilt, shame, feeling responsible for doing wrong or being wronged—elude conventional treatment.
War and PTSD are on the public’s mind as news stories regularly describe insurgency attacks in Iraq and paint grim portraits of the lives of returning soldiers afflicted with PTSD.
I’ve done a little bit of work with soldiers returning from Iraq and have worked with domestic violence shelter workers on issues of vicarious trauma.