> I think the specific way PTSD is normally described may be one of these
I'm not sure I understand: Are you saying that there is research that says PTSD is WEIRD? Or is this your idea?
One common feature of Western culture, or at least US culture, is to play down PTSD (and other psychological conditions). Suicide rates among veterans is sky-high, in part because PTSD is treated as dubious. Let's be careful about what we say.
Broader culture plays down all the atrocities and sheer waste of war for its own psycological purposes. Treating PTSD as dubious is simply collateral damage when it comes to pretending that war means anything but exploding living humans over dirt / oil / religion / money / power.
There's a common thread in the comment you're replying to and another comment made by the same author, in which they appear to quietly suggest that perhaps it's just TBIs and sleep deprivation. I get the sense it's a theme.
> One common feature of Western culture, or at least US culture, is to play down PTSD
> I'm not sure I understand: Are you saying that there is research that says PTSD is WEIRD? Or is this your idea?
I’m saying that the specific features and symptoms are not necessarily universal across cultures and that we don’t have anything close to a full understanding of the underlying psychology. All people react to stress, but the specific ways they react to stress might be more culturally bound than we expect. It’s hard to tell because our understanding of PTSD is almost entirely based on cases observed inside of WEIRD cultures.
> One common feature of Western culture, or at least US culture, is to play down PTSD (and other psychological conditions).
This was obviously very much the case for some time. I think we’ve made some laudable efforts to improve on this in recent years.
> Suicide rates among veterans is sky-high, in part because PTSD is treated as dubious.
I agree that veteran suicide is a major problem. I also agree with the desire to avoid stigma. That’s actually why I am skeptical about the impulse to address veteran mental health, for lack of a better terminology, almost entirely within a medical and clinical frame. That carries the implication that our culture is completely healthy and it’s only our returning warriors who are sick and mentally unwell. On the contrary, I think our culture is deeply sick and atomized, and that our warriors are more alienated from civil society than ever before.
It’s not just arrogant but outright laughable to assume we have all of this figured out. If we had it all figured out, we would have solved the problem.
> Let's be careful about what we say.
I am. Let’s be careful about making a good faith effort to actually understand and respond to what’s being said instead of misrepresenting it and trying to shut down the conversation.
I'm not sure I understand: Are you saying that there is research that says PTSD is WEIRD? Or is this your idea?
One common feature of Western culture, or at least US culture, is to play down PTSD (and other psychological conditions). Suicide rates among veterans is sky-high, in part because PTSD is treated as dubious. Let's be careful about what we say.