Medal of Honor Recipients Launch Post-Traumatic Stress Public Service Announcements

I just went and looked at the website Medal of Honor Speakout and I cried.
Then I began looking more closely at the message, which seems to be a script written by a military PR guy, and they all say the same thing, some with compassion and conviction and some like... Well go see for yourself.
I sent the website the following email:
I have played several of your videos and so far, none of the Medal of Honor recipients says that he had problems after he got home, although Audie Murphy said he did and fought with the VA during Vietnam to get help for combat veterans. Audie Murphy was sleeping in a bedroom he had built in his garage with the lights on all night and a gun under his pillow, and having a recurring nightmare. (50th Anniversary Issue of Esquire, article by Thomas Morgan, I believe). I suspect some of the others may have had similar experiences. Talking about them will have more of an effect than this impersonal stay strong message.
This "stay strong" message does not cut it. Unless some of these guys say that they needed help, it will simply keep our current veterans thinking that these guys did not need help because they were stronger!
Please reconsider the message. Drop the " stay strong," and say "get help. I did." Or "I lost three families before I realized it had affected me," or something like that. The idea that you don't want to let the enemy win is good.
Please forward this message to the Medal of Honor guys and let them decide.
I am the wife of a Vietnam veteran helicopter pilot, Robert Mason, who wrote the memoir, Chickenhawk, and we lived with PTSD when it didn't have a name and was not supposed to exist. Bob thought he was a loser, and I thought I was a bad wife or he would not be having problems. If we had known anyone who said they had problems too, it would have helped.


Patience Mason, Editor and Publisher
Patience Press
P O Box 2757
High Springs, FL 32655
352-215-9251
ptg@patiencepress.com
www.patiencepress.com
Publisher of information on recovering from PTSD
Member:
The International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies
American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress
" Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." --Dwight D. Eisenhower