The Collective Experience of PTSD

All this week, we’ve been talking about the experience of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that is experienced by our men and women in uniform returning home from war.
As we heard all week from veterans and service members themselves, much of that experience is lonely and isolating. Most Americans, after all, don’t think much about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on a daily basis.
While the trauma facing veterans returning home may be an individual experience, on some level, are we all going to experience this collectively as a nation?
Mary de Young is a Professor of Sociology at Grand Valley State University who specializes in the collective experience of post-traumatic stress disorder. She joins us to discuss how communities that experience PTSD, stress and trauma collectively get through it.