This morning a friend emailed me a link to a particularly disturbing story.  It is a very well written blog post  in the New York Times that provides an unusually unvarnished look into the dark pit that is PTSD.

There are plenty of articles and blog posts about PTSD bouncing around the internet, but this one is compelling in a way that so many others are not.  In this post the author candidly and openly describes how he attempted to end his own life because the lingering effects of his wartime experiences on his psyche.  He takes the reader with him as he writes the note that his wife will find with his cold and lifeless body and as he swallows an entire bottle of pills.

I won’t give the whole article away because it is too well written and too insightful for my humble efforts to recount it.  You can read it here.  I will say that it is an articulate indictment of how this Marine was treated by his supposed leaders when he reached out for help; if his treatment is indicative of how others are treated when they try to overcome PTSD while still in uniform then a lot of so called “leaders” need to look long and hard in the mirror.

They are not leaders.  They are anything but, and are a wretched example of what some implacable and soulless men and women in positions of responsibility can do to those that they have been entrusted to lead.

Sad.