Page 41 - Total War on PTSD

substance abuse, as their PTSD often leads to considerable community, word, social, and family adjustment issues.
**The following description of symptom presentation is based on my clinical experience of treating combat Veterans for over a decade. It is broadly generalized and it should be remembered that combat Veterans may present with only a few of the symptoms listed below or the majority of them, based on the individual. Please keep this in mind as you read the following summary, as it will not be descriptive of everyone.
Community and Family Reintegration:
When combat Veterans are in a war zone, their families and hope of returning home, as well as camaraderie with their combat peers, are lifelines for enduring their experiences. However, during the reintegration process, they often encounter struggles they do not anticipate while overseas. While they were deployed, their families, who also serve, have gone through significant adjustment issues to live without their combat Veteran while he/she was away. The military spouse has suddenly become a single parent, taking on the role of both parents in the family. This phenomenon is called role shifting. The family, including the Veteran’s children, may have endured a significant sense of loss and abandonment while the combat Veteran was deployed, even with the understanding that it is the combat Veteran’s job and responsibility to be deployed and serve our country.
The military spouse takes on new roles and rules of the house may shift to accommodate the loss and absence of the combat Veteran. The discipline and decisions in the home are left to the military spouse and commonly by the time the end of deployment occurs, the combat family has forged a new routine and rhythm to adjust to the absence of the combat Veteran. It is not hard to anticipate that although the family happily awaits the return of their combat Veteran, reintegrating him/her back into the family system is not always an easy task. The combat Veteran upon returning home, may feel like an outsider in the newly established system, not only due to shifting roles, but because they have endured trauma, they often cannot reconcile within themselves and begin to have symptoms for which they cannot cope. The family or spouse of
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