depression – Engaging Peace

by Kathie Malley-Morrison

The current standoff between Native American Water Protectors and the Army Corps of Engineers is only the most recent event in a long history of inhumanity carried out unflinchingly by invasive power structures motivated by greed.

Last fall, during the closing months of the Obama administration, thousands of people—even some banks—rallied around the Water Protectors as they tried to protest yet another treaty violation and protect their water supply and land from the encroachment of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Victory was joyfully embraced when the pipeline was stopped.

Yet, less than one month into the Trump administration, the pipeline is once again underway, protestors are being forced out of the area, and the battle cry of the public is sadly diminished.

What has happened?

Are the people who are disturbed by the Trump agenda just overwhelmed with Executive Orders, resignations, firings, noisy town meetings, references to Fascism?

Are some people so focused on stopping Trump that they do not have the energy to focus on and resist his carrying out of some of his threatened actions?

If you are concerned with the changes (or extensions of former changes) that seem to be bombarding our experiment in democracy from all sides, my suggestion is to continue as best you can to roll up your sleeves and attend to the three Rs:

Resist oppression.
Reject exploitative capitalism, with its disregard for the human costs of greed.
Repair the system.

We wrote in our last post about rape as a weapon of war—a weapon that is used all too often by servicemen against women serving in their own military. Today we focus more on the effects of military service on women.

Some facts:

Casualties

104 U.S. servicewomen, 33 of them only 18 years old, have been killed in Iraq (as of December 2011). See their faces and learn about them here.
Thirty-six servicewomen have been killed in Afghanistan—along with hundreds if not thousands of Afghan women and children (as of August 24, 2012).

Mental illness

Women veterans suffer higher rates of mental illness than male veterans, with particularly high rates of depression (http://www.newswise.com/articles/mission-unaccomplished-understanding-the-health-needs-of-our-women-veterans)
Among women veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who were diagnosed with PTSD, 31% reported military sexual trauma (MST). See also this video.
Women in the military abuse prescription drugs at a rate four times higher than nonmilitary women as well as somewhat higher than military men. See the report (opens in PDF) and watch this video.
Within the 18 to 34 year-old age group, female veterans were three times more likely to kill themselves than their non-veteran counterparts. Also see a study reported on NPR.

Homelessness

There are currently 55,000 homeless female vets. The rate of homelessness is declining among male veterans but increasing among women veterans

Limited access to benefits

Service women and female veterans often have difficulty getting the benefits to which they are entitled.

Many servicemen and male veterans are also mistreated both while in the service and after discharge; we will consider some of those issues in a later post.

What does it reveal about a country when women are praised as patriots for volunteering for military service, sexually abused while in the service, and then become mentally ill and homeless following that service? What does it reveal about the current situation in our country when many working class women believe the only way they can get enough training and job experience to support themselves and a family is to put themselves in harm’s way?

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology