Miriam's HONY: Invisible Wounds

 

The story I chose was from the series titled “Invisible Wounds”. These were stories told by war veterans who were suffering from PTSD and assimilating back into society and trying to understand how they’d gone from where they started off to going to war. The particular story I chose to analyze is the story of a woman whose brother came back from war, filled out a psych evaluation in which he admitted to being suicidal, didn’t receive the proper treatment, and then hung himself. She talks about the pain of knowing someone could have done something to help him, but instead they dismissed him, and he ended up dead. She also regretted that their last conversation had been an argument, however she blamed the doctors who saw that he was suicidal and then sent him home without a second thought. She believes he died due to PTSD. He wasn’t the kind of person who anyone could picture in a war. I think the purpose of this story is to show the lack of attention given to soldiers’ mental health when they come back from war. Assimilating back into society is difficult, and many of them suffer from severe PTSD. His death could potentially have been prevented had he received the proper treatment, however his feelings were dismissed, and it killed him. This story raises awareness of the effects of war and PTSD and how more has to be done to prevent these sorts of events from occurring. This story is very short, only two paragraphs, yet it has so much substance. The most memorable line for me was “we used to drive to school together every single day”. The memory of driving to school with her brother parallels with the fight they had shortly before he died, which happened because she borrowed his truck without permission. This story also shows the perspective of someone who has lost a loved one to suicide and what it’s like to feel partially responsible for it. She says, “If I hadn’t fought with him, he would have felt comfortable calling me. And we could have talked it through”. Sentiments such as these are common among people who know someone who has died from suicide, as I’ve learned from research I’ve done on the subject. It makes sense, since in hindsight, it always seems like something more could have been done. The only people really at fault here, in my opinion, are the doctors who saw that he was suicidal and sent him home without a second thought. This was another message from this post: that suicide is preventable if people receive the proper care, especially those who are more prone to it, and especially someone who outright says that they are suicidal. The psych eval answers

were clearly a cry for help that was overlooked and brushed off and resulted in fatal consequences. Stories such as these show why we must prioritize mental health care as much as physical health. The first photo in the post is emotional, setting the scene for the rest of it. The narrator is depicted holding a frame with multiple pictures of her brother at different stages of his life, and his birth and death dates at the bottom of the frame. This gives the story a more personal feel. The photos of Stephen really show the reader that he was a real person who suffered at the hands of incompetence in mental health care and makes you realize that it can happen to anyone.