31% of veterans were affected by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and many of them never have gotten help. Most people do not get help due to hospitals not allowing help to veterans due to the surplus of them. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is an accurate representation of minor and major PTSD in war by showing the change in soldiers from the start and the end of war.
One of the most showing moments of the signs of PTSD is in the chapter “The Man I Killed” as after the man is killed Tim can do nothing except stare at the cold dead body in front of him and cannot move. This relates to the symptom of PTSD of after an extreme traumatic experience the body goes into shock and cannot move or can only process little bits of information as your brain is being flooded. It is also seen many times throughout the book when it uses flashforwards that Tim is still heavily struggling with the war possibly due to PTSD or other mental illnesses most likely either from the war or loss of innocence. Tim states that he writes “to keep his friends alive through the stories” (O’Brien …show more content…
It can raise your stress levels and can make you have panic attacks which goes hand in hand with depression and anxiety. Veterans however on average do not get treated for PTSD maybe because they are ashamed but a big part of it is after war they don’t accept them because there are way to many patients needing to be helped. This possibly could throw a wrench in the argument that it is an accurate representation, because when you go to the flashforward it seems like he is fine and not struggling to hard with his mental state. However I would argue this point saying that first it is his writing so he can shelter parts however much he wanted to, plus he does still be seeming to come to terms with everything that happened even a long time after because of how traumatic it