I fortunately don’t have PTSD and never was in the military. However, I do know people who have and who were.
My experience comes from a 1 year tour as a HEMS (helicopter emergency medical service) pilot, and we saw a lot of bad accidents.
Basically, if they call for you it is a big one..although we’ve had our share of not so bad ones that just looked bad initially.

Anyway, we were told in training that nobody leaves after shift until the incident was talked through and we all felt we could sleep that night. Because we were able to draw from the experience of civilian emergency workers, we were allowed to be “soft” and talk, and cry if we felt like it. And on occasion, I certainly cried.
I feel that was instrumental in now NOT having PTSD, and I try to be there for people who have. I feel fortunate that some of them trust me enough to share their stories and nightmares with me, lessening their impact.

But yeah, we are all social creatures and we need to share and communicate. Find people you trust and who are willing to listen and trying to understand. Whatever you feel is valid, and everybody has a breaking point, even the macho’s. It merely depends on speed, impact and quantity of the experiences, and whether you were given a chance to offload early enough like we were in the HEMS service.

Take care you all. You have friends out there, allow them to help you.

Those suicides include all veterans from all wars, up to and including Iraq. A certain percentage of them would have occurred, deployment or no, based on the suicide rates for non-military demographics. It still is a big problem overall, because there is a huge stigma attached to mental illness in general, not just the military.

Military or not, having any sort of mental illness will destroy or damage many careers, especially any that have public relations as part of the package. It will destroy any future political career that you may want–all because of the unspoken perception of you being crazy.

PTSD aside, there are plenty of other reasons soldiers kill themselves overseas. I know one guy who shot himself while on guard duty because of how his platoon had treated him during the deployment (and that was less than three months in on a 15 month tour). His platoon sergeant was relieved for cause, but it hardly helps the soldier out.

Growing up, my sibs and I learned how to move and how not to move around military people. Making Daddy Jump was not a game we were encouraged to play. Nor was Bombarding Dad With Questions About Things We Learned in Modern History.

Dad still jumps at loud noises, and has asked the neighbors to give him a heads up when they go shooting in the woods. I have never asked him, but he doesn’t seem to like being in large crowds alone.

On occasion he will talk to my sibs and I about his time in the service. He tends to tell each of us different things, so later on, the sibs and I will get together and compare stories.

My immediate and extended family tends to be protective of those members that have served, to the point of sitting down those who have married in and going over what is and isn’t appropriate to ask.

The lesson here, find a civilian doctor.