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hrimfaxiyesterday at 7:51 PM1 replyview on HN

It's unfortunate that there are not citations for some of the numbers. I found this piece compelling:

> Marcus. He is twenty-eight and did two tours in Iraq. He has nightmares four to five nights a week. He drinks to fall asleep. His girlfriend left because she couldn't live with someone who woke up swinging. He tried therapy three times. The first therapist was a civilian who asked how combat made him feel. The second used Cognitive Processing Therapy but sessions were every two weeks, and when she said “trauma narrative,” his chest closed. The third was private practice, $160 a session. Marcus started to describe what happened in the house in Mosul — the one with the family in the back room — and the therapist's face changed. A microexpression, less than a second. Marcus caught it. He stopped talking. He never went back. The 73% problem, made human. Marcus has things inside him that are killing him slowly, and he has never found a room safe enough to say them. Not because the therapists were bad. Because the therapists were human, and the things Marcus needs to say are the things that change how a human looks at you.


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alexpotatoyesterday at 7:59 PM

This reminds me of a story about how veterans with PTSD from recent wars were reading the Odyssey b/c there is a point where Ajax describes a "flashback".

More details here: https://www.vice.com/en/article/how-ancient-greek-tragedies-...

P.S. Almost every time I hear discussions about veterans and PTSD, the veterans say something like "having a therapist be someone who is ALSO a veteran and has seen combat is worth a million points"

(I'm sure there are therapists who are excellent and are not veterans, just pointing out what the veterans value).