Although veterans go to war to fight for the United States’ independence, they are not always treated with the respect and honor they deserve or given the help they need after returning home. When veterans come home after war, they bring a lot of baggage with them. The way society treats veterans and the kind of medical or mental treatment they receive will help them to deal with that baggage and learn how to adapt to society. Unfortunately, over time, the way people in society have treated post-war veterans has slowly hit rock bottom because people do not understand the mental state of veterans when they return home. Therefore, many veterans remain in combat mode and have a hard time assimilating into society.
In Homer’s The Odyssey, Odysseus …show more content…
Stories about the tragic events that happened in war to four different veterans are told. Shay then explains that these horrible events tend to cause veterans to have trouble adapting to regular life and how society treats them as well as the kind of medical help they receive. Some treatment does not seem to help veterans. One veteran known as Wiry was treated at a VA hospital, but this treatment only left him “partially stabilized.” He is still “highly symptomatic, highly mistrustful, and highly explosive” (Shay para. 50). The medical treatment for veterans is not as thorough as it should be. They should receive treatment that fully stabilizes them, but in Wiry’s case and many others, treatment does not seem to help that help them on the road to recovery. Veterans often face some amount of paranoia after their experiences. One example of this is Bear Mercer. His wife started sleeping on their couch because “Bear always sleeps with a knife under his pillow despite her pleas not to.” Bear is very keen about “forcing his family to lower the blinds at sundown,” and he “walks the perimeter” every night before bed looking for snipers and ambushes” (Shay para. 26). Bear Mercer’s mental state remains fixed in combat mode, which caused him to alarmingly search the parameters of his home in case of the presence of an intruder. Vietnam veterans did not get the treatment that is efficient enough to help them in their recovery and society did not treat these veterans with the respect and honor they
In Homer’s The Odyssey, Odysseus …show more content…
Stories about the tragic events that happened in war to four different veterans are told. Shay then explains that these horrible events tend to cause veterans to have trouble adapting to regular life and how society treats them as well as the kind of medical help they receive. Some treatment does not seem to help veterans. One veteran known as Wiry was treated at a VA hospital, but this treatment only left him “partially stabilized.” He is still “highly symptomatic, highly mistrustful, and highly explosive” (Shay para. 50). The medical treatment for veterans is not as thorough as it should be. They should receive treatment that fully stabilizes them, but in Wiry’s case and many others, treatment does not seem to help that help them on the road to recovery. Veterans often face some amount of paranoia after their experiences. One example of this is Bear Mercer. His wife started sleeping on their couch because “Bear always sleeps with a knife under his pillow despite her pleas not to.” Bear is very keen about “forcing his family to lower the blinds at sundown,” and he “walks the perimeter” every night before bed looking for snipers and ambushes” (Shay para. 26). Bear Mercer’s mental state remains fixed in combat mode, which caused him to alarmingly search the parameters of his home in case of the presence of an intruder. Vietnam veterans did not get the treatment that is efficient enough to help them in their recovery and society did not treat these veterans with the respect and honor they