G. James Farmer
4/25/2024
Veterans and PTSD
PTSD or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a major problem for a handful of war veterans, most predominantly in ones that served in Vietnam and Afghanistan/Iraq. As according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 3% of WWII/Korean vets saying that they had experienced PTSD sometime in their lives, rising to 10% of Vietnam vets, and heavily rising to 29% when the same question is asked to Afghanistan/Iraq veterans. The rise of PTSD over the years is of course, a problem, but how did it get like this in the first place?
One could say it’s how we see it over and over again, thanks to videotape, and later digital cameras being widespread, it is more likely than ever for people to see what terrified them. The main solution for that would be to leave social media, but as for the memories still there, they can be replaced with happier thoughts in life such as family. Looking back at the PTSD rates, the WWII veterans were least likely to have PTSD compared to their Afghanistan/Iraq counterparts, and I think a reason why that is is because they had bigger families, as in the 1950s and early 1960s, the fertility rate in the United States was constantly over 3.0 births per woman, while for many years now, it’s been below 2.1, which is the replacement level of fertility.
So what I’m saying here, is that a way to help veterans get over their PTSD is to help them start families. Starting a 1950s style family the way the WWII veterans did would be almost impossible in today’s world, but there is a way to change that, and that is the government can help in that regard. First, newly wed couples are given a loan to buy a home, and for every child the married couple has, ¼ of the loan gets paid off, so if the couple has four children, the house is theirs, and they have a large family, for a win-win situation. Of course, that wasn’t a thing in the baby boom period, but it was much easier to get a house, and to have a large family back then than it is today, as according to Brillianto, the average price of a home in 1950 was $7,354 ($93,807.45 adjusted for inflation) with the average salary being $2,990 ($38,140.37 adjusted for inflation) while today, according to Forbes, the average price for a new home is $412,000, while according to USA Today, the average salary is $59,384, so as you can see, it’s not that easy for a veteran to buy a home right after he gets out of the military thanks to the rising wages not keeping up with the skyrocketing housing costs, so adopting that policy I proposed earlier won’t be such a bad idea.
So with a home, and a large family to take care of, the veterans will likely be too busy to have flashbacks to their traumatic times as a soldier, along with not seeing videos of it on social media as often due to once again, having a family to take care of. Furthermore, to take out two birds with one stone, the solution I came up with can also solve America’s housing crisis, along with it’s record low fertility rate. So not only are the veterans happier, and less likely to have a PTSD attack, the people of America can finally not live in fear of being homeless or childless.
On the having babies part, I’m not the only one who thinks this, as in a 2021 BBC Article written by Stephanie Hegarty, she says this about ways to make the fertility rates go up.
”The small town of Nagi-cho is a happy outlier from Japan’s shrinking population. Over nine years it managed to double its birth rate – from 1.4 to 2.8 children per woman with an extensive scheme of family friendly policies.
Families get baby bonuses and children allowances but it also costs half the national average to send a child to nursery. Its success has been extraordinary but it’s a small, rural town. In the rest of East Asia, crippling work culture makes it difficult for mothers or fathers to balance the needs of work and family.
South Korea has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world and has spent more than $130bn (£92bn) on incentives for families. Some of these sound pretty obvious – free childcare, housing benefits or support for IVF. And some, like the holidays offered to civil servants so they can go home and make babies, are more creative. But none of them seem to be working.”
So in conclusion, as we can see with the lower rates of PTSD in the older generations, and seeing how different the world was when they were young, makes you see why that was. With larger families to take care of, and time away from things that can trigger the PTSD, the risk of a PTSD attack happening was low, so in responce to wages not keeping up with the prices of homes and other needs, the Government should truly take some measures to try to get the fertility rate back up, along with getting more people into homes, to end this crisis not only affecting our veterans, but the rest of America’s youth.
Sources:
Va.gov: Veterans Affairs. How Common is PTSD in Veterans? (2018, July 24). https://www.ptsd.va.gov/understand/common/common_veterans.asp#:~:text=At%20some%20point%20in%20their%20life%2C%207%20out,male%20Veterans%20%286%20out%20of%20100%2C%20or%206%25%29.
Nations, U. (n.d.). U.S. fertility rate 1950-2024. MacroTrends. https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/fertility-rate#:~:text=The%20current%20fertility%20rate%20for%20U.S.%20in%202024,births%20per%20woman%2C%20a%200.06%25%20increase%20from%202021.
Forgeard, A. V. (2024, April 6). How much was a house in 1950: Prices then and now. Brilliantio. https://brilliantio.com/how-much-was-a-house-in-1950/#:~:text=To%20give%20you%20a%20perspective%2C%20the%20median%20home,a%20different%20financial%20equation%20than%20it%20is%20today.
Fontinelle, A. (2024, April 18). Median home price by state 2024. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/advisor/mortgages/real-estate/median-home-prices-by-state/#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20median%20home%20price%20was,%24412%2C000%20in%20September%202023%2C%20according%20to%20Redfin.
Punjwani, M. (2024, February 22). Average salary in the U.S. in 2024. USA Today. https://www.usatoday.com/money/blueprint/business/hr-payroll/average-salary-us/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20U.S.%20Bureau%20of%20Labor%2C%20the,to%20the%207.3%25%20rise%20between%202021%20and%202022.
Hegarty, S. (2021, May 15). How do you convince people to have babies?. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-57112631
Sprockets and Springes 