More women in combat means more mothers with PTSD

12-14-2011 • www.cnn.com

Palo Alto, California (CNN) -- It wasn't until five months after Army Staff Sgt. June Moss returned from the Iraq war in 2003 that her real battle began. The horrors of the war -- witnessing decapitated and burned bodies amid mass destruction -- led to post-traumatic stress disorder.

"I do notice when I'm stressing out that I start having dreams about what I saw and how I felt," says Moss, now 40 and retired from the Army. "It does come back as if to haunt you."

The percentage of women in the military has doubled in the last 30 years, with more than 350,000 serving as of 2009, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs' latest figures. With more female troops in combat, there has been an increase in PTSD diagnoses: One in five female veterans suffer from PTSD, according to the VA.

1 Comments in Response to More women in combat means more mothers with PTSD

Comment by Mark Edward

Entered on: 12/14/2011 4:01:27 PM

I hope ALL women who take any direct combat-related military job suffer from PTSD! They deserve it. Combat is no place for women. What will happen to the next generation of children when 350,000 military women try to raise children?? It just isn't right. Just the process of joining the military takes away essential "female qualities" that are required for proper child raising - not to mention a proper marriage relationship. The young girls who join the military are being deceived, and their parents are stupid enough to just let them go. It literally makes me SICK when I hear a parent act "proud" to have their little girl in the military! Idiots! There are FAR better ways to pay for college. Young girls who are perverted enough to think they can "act like the guys" and "be tough" just plain deserve to spend their adult life on psych drugs or in mental hospitals. Putting women in the military is a very serious perversion of society and civilization and we deserve the horrors we will all suffer because we have allowed it.

Make a Comment (1) • Email Link • Send Letter to Editor