PTSD – Page 2 – Engaging Peace

Father Michael Lapsley addresses the healing of trauma, Part 1

Posted on November 11, 2013November 25, 2013 by kathiemm

By guest author Dot Walsh

“UBUNTU” in the Xhosa culture means: “I am because we are.”

On Veterans Day, November 11, it is good to recognize that many of the women and men who have served at war in Afghanistan and other foreign countries return to their homes without adequate support for the trauma they have experienced.

Trauma is an invisible wound. We have learned a lot about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and have identified it in individuals engaged in current wars. But soldiers who returned from Vietnam and Korea often remain victims of their pain and sometimes victimize others.

A recent visit, interview, and workshop with Father Michael Lapsley of South Africa gave me some insight into the effects of trauma and the possibility of healing. Father Lapsley is an Anglican priest from New Zealand who experienced his own trauma as a result of his active participation in speaking out against the apartheid regime in South Africa.

In 1973 during the height of apartheid, he was sent by his order to Durban, South Africa, to serve as chaplain for both black and white university students. As a witness to the atrocities and injustices of apartheid, he began to speak out on behalf of schoolchildren who were being shot, detained, and tortured.

Because of his public stand against the government, his life was threatened. It became necessary for him to leave the country and go into exile in Zimbabwe. In 1990, he received a letter bomb that was hidden inside two religious magazines. The bomb exploded with a force that blew off both of his hands and blinded him in one eye, along with covering his body with serious burns.

After a long recovery in Australia, he returned to South Africa to become chaplain of the Trauma Centre for Survivors of Violence and Torture, which became part of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). This work led to the creation of the Institute for Healing of Memories (IHOM), an organization that focuses on individuals who tell their stories in workshops where they can begin to work through their trauma.

[to be continued]

Dot Walsh is a lifelong peace activist and member of the Engaging Peace board of directors.

Veterans and the Occupy movements

Posted on November 10, 2011November 9, 2011 by kathiemm

Tomorrow, Friday November 11, 2011, is Veterans Day in the United States, and for many it will be a holiday. Unfortunately, as has often been true historically, veterans in America are not doing well. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) rates and suicides among veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars are skyrocketing. (See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycDZFKNAHEM .)

KMM at Iraq War Vets at Occupy Boston — Kathie Malley-Morrison visits the Iraq War Vets tent at Occupy Boston. Photo by Dan Goodwin, used by permission.

Although these wars have generated huge profits for corporations like Lockheed Martin, veterans can have a very difficult time obtaining the benefits that were promised when they enlisted.

In these financially troubling times, perhaps it should not be surprising that many people in power are arguing that veterans are not entitled to all of their entitlements.

It should not be surprising, then, that many veterans groups, like much of organized labor, are very attracted to the movements to Occupy…Wall Street, Boston, Tampa, Albuquerque, Atlanta, Baltimore, Burlington….the list goes on and on, in the US and beyond.

Most veterans are probably well down near the bottom of the 99% of our society who are suffering from current political policies and economic inequality.

It is not benefits to veterans, all of whom have probably been wounded in one way or another, that have caused the economic problems in this country. It is the bankers and war profiteers, the speculators, the fraction of the 1% at the top for whom profits are king and other lives are dispensable.

Probably the greatest barrier to peace is that many of the people in power have not figured out how to profit from it.

A recent Pew Research Center poll (see report at http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/NEWS/Pew-Military-Report.pdf ) finds that 1 in 3 post 9-11 veterans view the Afghanistan and Iraq wars as a waste. What is your view? Where and how can you express it?

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Towards greater moral engagement

Posted on January 6, 2011April 18, 2021 by kathiemm

Moral engagement requires moral agency–active engagement in resisting pressures and justifications for behaving inhumanely, and proactive efforts to engage in and promote humane behavior. Key contributors to moral agency include humanizing the other, and empathizing with the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of the other.

Poster: Free Manning — Poster designed by Eric Gulliver, 2011

A noteworthy example of someone who courageously stuck his neck out to protest inhumane behavior is U.S. Army PFC Bradley Manning. We recommend that you read all you can about this serviceman and decide which mechanisms fit him or whoever is the WikiLeaks whistle blower who released the video of the helicopter attack on civilians and the Reuters newsmen.

Moral engagement does not come easy. Manning has been imprisoned and allegedly tortured for his whistle blowing activities. On a lesser scale, humanizing members of a group that is reviled by members of your own group can make you unpopular and put you at risk. Empathizing with people who are despised by your peers can be psychologically painful and socially dangerous.

However, there are also high costs to moral disengagement. Wars are increasingly followed by large numbers of suicides and cases of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in their former participants—a likely reflection of the “moral injury” experienced by those former participants because of what they did to other human beings. (For more information on moral injury in veterans, see the work of Brett Litz.)

Movement from moral disengagement to engagement is possible. Servicemen who went to Vietnam were well-indoctrinated in morally disengaged reasoning. Yet many became morally engaged in the face of the horrendous inhumanity they witnessed and in which they were ordered to participate. The active anti-war movement that spread within the armed forces helped bring that war to an end.

Today, veterans against the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are working tirelessly for an end to those wars. Consider what you can do to support them and engage in peace-promoting activities. For example, read and consider adding your name to the Open Letter of Reconciliation and Responsibility to the Iraqi People by Iraq Veterans Against the War.

If you love democracy and appreciate your freedoms, remember the words of Thomas Jefferson: “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” Remember also how many times yesterday’s “enemies” have become today’s allies. Reconciliation is always possible.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Attending to negative consequences (Moral engagement, part 7)

Posted on November 1, 2010July 6, 2011 by kathiemm

Marine sargeant comforts girlfriend before leaving for Arabian Gulf region. (U.S. Navy photo in public domain; from WikiMedia Commons

It’s not easy to exercise the form of moral engagement known as attending to negative consequences. People in power are reluctant to reveal the negative consequences of their acts of aggression.

Consider these examples:

Former President George Bush’s refusal to hold a public ceremony when bodies were returned to the United States from various war zones.
The civilian casualties inflicted by American servicemen and women and drones that are covered up by the government and mainstream media.
The reluctance of ordinary people to think about the murder, torture, dismembering, and terrorizing of men, women, and children in which Americans participate either directly or indirectly. What can be more horrifying than to think of oneself as collusive in such activities, even if only indirectly through doing nothing?

A first step towards moral engagement in response to cover-ups is obtaining the kind of information provided by Wikileaks, the progressive electronic media, and groups such as Psychologists for Social Responsibility.

The next step is to act:

Read and weigh the available information.
Insist on public transparency in regard to the effects of our government’s military policies.
Hold public officials responsible for their behavior.
Learn who among the nation’s politicians has the courage to speak out against the slaughter our country has caused in various parts of the world.
Exercise your right and responsibility to vote for pro-peace candidates.
Attend to the consequences of participation in armed aggression for our own service people and their families; think about the impact of the escalating numbers of cases of PTSD, suicide, homicide, drug and alcohol abuse, and family violence and disruption for the service people, their families, their communities and the health of the nation.

Finally, consider the devastating and long-lasting effects of war on the environment–to be discussed more in future posts. In tomorrow’s U.S. election, beware of political candidates who reap enormous profits from the “harvesting” and selling of fossil fuels and scoff at the overwhelming evidence not just for global warming but other catastrophic environmental events.

See the documentary The 11th Hour and think twice about awarding your votes to profiteers who deny the consequences of their profiteering.

And remember to vote.

Vote for peace.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology