Page 54 - Total War on PTSD

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 the combat Veteran may experience a profound sense of loss related to the return of the Veteran, as the individual who left months earlier truly did not return home.
When combat Veterans return to their communities, they are often isolated from their military peers and the men and women with whom they were deployed. They feel alone in their experience and feel those around them do not understand what they have been through, as well
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