How, When and Why Veterans Choose Suicide to Deal with Their PTSD

I am the author of PTSD for Dummies.

In fact, since its publication I have been fighting an uphill struggle to get PTSD renamed to what people with it actually live.

That is a name that my late mentor and suicide pioneer, Dr. Edwin Shneidman, told me. It’s RTA which stands for Re-Traumatization Avoidance.

In my work and research with traumatized individuals, including not only veterans, but rape and violence victims, and even people who have survived cancer, nearly all the symptoms of PTSD are an effort to avoid re-traumatization.

What underlies RTA?

When you say to a veteran (or rape victim, etc) who has survived a horrendous trauma, “How courageous you are that you got through and over it?” and look them in the eye as you’re speaking to them.

They’ll look you back in your eye and respond, “I got past it, I never got over it.”

If you ask them what they mean by that, they’ll look back at you intently and speak their truth, “I’m not the same as I was before. I’m tentative and don’t put two feet into anything. I’m…