"Facing It" By Yusef Komunyakaa: Depression And Post Traumatic Stress Disorder In Veterans
The percentage of veterans that come out of the service with a mental illness is about 25 percent. The most common mental illnesses that veteran get diagnosed with are Depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Reading the poem, I concluded that the speaker is suffering from PTSD and Depression. PTSD is traumatic events such as military combat, any types of a disaster and assault that your survived. The symptoms for this illness is having flashbacks of the day, anxiety, nightmares, having trouble sleeping, and abusing alcohol and drugs. Depression is more than just feeling sad, but it is an illness that makes you feel negative on how you feel and interferes with your daily life and normal functioning. Some of the symptoms are feeling guilty, loss of interest in something, feeling sad and thoughts of death/ suicide. It is not something you can simply get over it will take some time.
In the poem you will use context clues to see that the author has or is suffering from one of these mental illnesses.
“I touch the name Andrew Johnson; I see booby traps white flesh. ”. The speaker was having a flashback to when him and Andrew was in Vietnam; the speaker had witnessed Andrews death. This is a case of PTSD because the symptoms of him having flashbacks of a traumatic even that had happened. Another act that shoes he might have PTSD is when he said, “he lost his right arm inside the stone. ”. This can mean a few things he can either be talking about someone losing their right arm and then maybe dying. “The sky, A plane in the sky. ”. Which can mean he had flashbacks of when he was at war and the planes in the sky were attacking them or even protecting them from attack. It can be either a god or bad flashback. Post-traumatic stress disorder is about 15 times higher for soldiers then a civilian.
“My clouded reflection eyes me like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning. ”. Which means the speaker had an emotional release; Which can mean he released some stress, anxiety, fear or any other emotions. With having depression releasing some of that can help bring the positive in and keep the negative out. “I go down the 58,022 names, half-expecting to find my own in letters like smoke. ”. I believe this means he had to accept that all these people had died while fighting for our county and he had become guilty of the fact that his names wasn’t on the wall but there all these thousands. Feeling guilty of something you have really no control of can really take a big toll on you. Which then can lead to being depressed. Having depression for soldiers is 5 times higher than a civilian. Having depression and suffering from post-traumatic stress can be very scary. Suffering these mental disorders can be life threating due to committing suicide or any type of self-harm. Treatments that help treat PTSD is medications and psychotherapy. CBT is a psychotherapy where they try to stop the negative thinking patterns and make them into positive thoughts. Changing someone’s thoughts will result in positive actions and behaviors in difficult moments. EMDR is a psychotherapy treatment that is designed to alleviate the distress associated with traumatic memories.
