Iraq in 2003 was a nightmare C.J. Grisham could not wake up from. It was sustained, almost daily combat for months, and Grisham, a first sergeant in the Army, said he could feel the strain.
Once, he said he was forced to shoot a person being used as a human shield. Another time, he helped an Iraqi family extract a dead loved one from a burned car. He started to have flashbacks, vivid nightmares and suicidal thoughts — all signs of post-traumatic stress disorder.
“It’s like a million voices in my head telling me that I’m not good enough to be alive,” he told The Nation’s Health.
The voices told him he should be dead. They said his depression was a sign of weakness and that it was his selfishness that let his friends die.
“It’s maddening, and I look forward to the day the voices end,” he said.
To continue reading this story from the April 2012 issue of The Nation’s Health, visit the newspaper online.
Veterans’ health and post-traumatic stress was the theme of a recent issue of the American Journal of Public Health as well as a new book from APHA Press.
