PTSD, Hollywood, and the TV show "Combat"

Okay, so one of my anomalies is that I am interested in TV war shows, war movies and books about the history of war, or, as in The Red Badge of Courage about the character development than can occur in any catastrophic situation.   For someone who does not think killing is an option to solving problems, this is a major contradiction. But not really because catastrophe does sometime develop character.  War depicts the worst of mankind, but also, sometimes, the best.  

I have found a Saturday night lineup, on a TV channel called Heroes and Icons, of TV shows from World War II, and Vietnam.  One of my favorites is Combat!, and I cannot say why, except that we watched this TV show as a family when I was a child, and it evokes memories of being in the living room with my family, enjoying the family time.  Good memories.

Some of the episodes of Combat touch on the issue of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, although that was not an official psychiatric diagnosis until the 1980s. The article noted indicates that mankind has no doubt suffered from PTSD from since the beginning of time... It has been known or at least referred to by many other terms, including, but not inclusive, shell shock, hysteria, traumatic neurosis, nervous breakdown, battle fatigue. Infamously, among other things, General Patton, in World War II, is know for two incidents of slapping soldiers, who were suffering from PTSD, but he accused them of malingering.  

Literature, drama, movies and TV have long addressed PTSD. A movie that comes to mind is Captain Newman, MD, based on a book by the same name, written by Leo Rosten. The Wikipedia article referenced above (PTSD) even refers to a reference in the Bible.

The point being, that what has been known anecdotally for perhaps thousands of years, has become codified by science and medicine. Personally, I think there is much in folklore and indigenous history, including oral history and pictorial history that science can learn from.  And, our authors, storytellers, and native "medicine men, shaman, seers, conjurers" and others who demonstrate a keen awareness of human nature, have much to offer science about human nature, and human history.   I just think we have to keep an open mind to all the possibilities. 

The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease by Jonathan M. Metzl.

This is probably more academic than useful to someone as a practitioner, but I feel the need to share it, and I am not sure with whom. I think if some of administrators, who know nothing about mental health care would read this, it might help them to understand what is needed in mental health care in prisons, but of course, that is like wishing for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. 

I recently read The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease   by Jonathan M. Metzl. The Protest Psychosis I am not sure how much I agree with a lot of his premises, especially evaluating the use of schizophrenia and schizophrenic in the media, including popular, but not scientific, media but there were some interesting ideas and information advanced in the book.  Most of it was based on information from the Ionia State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, in Ionia, Michigan

One of the saddest was in Part V, about Rasheed Karim, in 1967.  His story is not too dissimilar to many we hear today.   He was committed to the Ionia State Hospital, because he was attacked, and in defending himself, assaulted police.  But this part of the book is not just about his ongoing attempts to be released from Ionia State Hospital.  It also refers to the 1963 Mental Retardation Facilities and Community Mental Health Centers Construction Act.  I think you might recall the de-institutionalization of mental health patients, with the promise of community support programs that did not materialize.   This was supposed to be “cost saving” but I suspect it cost more than keeping people in institutions, as expensive as that was, because in the community, everyone HAD to have individualized care plans, and individual care providers. 

This section of the book goes on to describe how the Ionia State Hospital became the Riverside Correctional Facility, and the warehousing of the mentally ill who would have previously been in a “state hospital.”   Skyview, in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice system, was originally on the grounds of the Rusk State Hospital, and sadly, became a TDCJ treatment facility.  Hopefully, treatment before the Ruiz judgement was not just warehousing.  The Montford Unit, in Lubbock, Texas,  is in existence because of the Ruiz judgement.  But  the letter of the law of the Ruiz judgement does not reflect the spirit of the law  in terms of what is provided for treatment today.