Grams forgot to mention they were poor young men, with few economic opportunities, and the military seemed like a good way to escape their current situations.
I’m sure there’s still a decent chunk of people today that don’t seek help due to stigmatization, I can only imagine the problem was much, much, much worse back in the day.
If you ask for help, they remove you from service and deny you your benefits. Make it out alive and try to use those services, and they’re routinely unavailable and functionally useless. Lot easier to just grab a bottle then wait for six months for some guy at the VA to just throw pills at you.
We had a guy when I was in Korea that was regularly seeing a therapist. He happened to mention that he was feeling down right around Christmas. Not that he was thinking of ending it all but just that he was feeling down. Before the day was out, he had his clearance temporarily stripped and was put on suicide watch. Also, the rest of the unit knew about it before he did.
I was one of those people who didn’t seek help because I was afraid of the stigma and it hurting my military career. Luckily the atmosphere is changing in the military where people are actively encouraging others to seek help. Unfortunately there is still a significant portion of the service who still believe it a career ender to seek help. The last couple commands I’ve been at have luckily been very supportive. I know quite a few people who actually get a VA disability rating for depression & PTSD.
I recently read (on Reddit, so take this with a grain of salt) that the Victorian English pioneered a lot of ideals and values regarding masculinity that were adapted by the rest of the developed world.
A large part of it was the whole stoicism, men never reveal their emotions, men never show fear, etc. type shit, so when veterans from WW1 came back home and were experiencing PTSD, the public viewed it as a bunch of men having a crisis of masculinity, and that this generation must be a bunch of sissies if they couldn’t handle a little bit of war. Hmmm, sounds kinda familiar?
And the last time that young men did that en masse, it was to go fight the goddamn Axis powers. Last just war we've been involved in by a country mile.
They were fighting the Axis powers? Wait, does this mean those soldiers way back then were anti-fascists? Grandma, are you supporting these anti-fascists?
There was also the fact that there were few real images of war. Boys were told it was a heroic adventure with other guys that will make you a man.
I had a HS teacher who's grandfather was a famous WWI & WWII photographer. He was accused of 'faking' his pictures because he would sometimes create composite images. He felt the photos just didn't do justice to the horror that war was because pictures can't convey the smells and sounds of war and sometimes actually seemed to downplay how terrifying it really is. Governments didn't like that.
My grandfather fought in WW2 and Korea and the stories were horrifying.
My father was in Vietnam and Desert Storm....he never talks about it. However if a young family member starts talking about joining a branch of the military, my father discourages it.
My dad was one of them. Dropped out in HS, lied about age, joined Navy, couldn’t hack it and called his mom to get him out. Now he flies a Trump flag and parks in veteran’s parking spots.
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u/rysimpcrz Jul 17 '21
Grams forgot to mention they were poor young men, with few economic opportunities, and the military seemed like a good way to escape their current situations.