What does it mean when an individual -- or a system, such as the VA -- reaches its breaking point? Do they even know? And what can we learn from what makes some, or even many or most, snap under the strain, when others (a few) manage to survive and find meaning, not crushing, in their suffering?
Viennese psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor -- concentration camp survivor might be more accurate -- Viktor Frankl wrote Man's Search for Meaning, considered one of a handful of hugely influential books in the 20th century. Like Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, who "systematized" the steps around death and dying, and postulated that everyone goes through them, Frankl took a look, as a psychiatrist, at the tremendous suffering he and other concentration camp inmates had experienced, and drew a few conclusions. In his opinion, there were three main stages that everyone who suffered tremendously would undergo: shock, apathy, and either giving up, or choosing to find some sort of meaning in the suffering.
As the news we read is saturated more and more with ever more instances of veterans snapping under the pressure and the strain, and committing suicide, or going AWOL rather than return to Iraq, or lashing out at their loved ones in some extreme way; or the system itself snapping under the strain -- we are literally watching people and organizations hit their breaking points. Some will survive, but many will not, and it's not a value judgment on the ones who do not. Projects like the PTSD Timeline chronicle the incidences of individual combat veterans reaching their breaking points, sadly enough. But the stressors on the system are also enormous -- the toll that combat doctors and nurses are under in treating massive injuries hour after hour in Balad, Landstuhl, Walter Reed, etc., and the various trauma hospitals where severely injured veterans are sent across the country -- the toll that the VA is under, which much greater demand for its services than can be safely delivered. And we need to ask the question -- whether it's an individual veteran or a system supporting veterans -- what does the "breaking point" actually look like? Will we know it when we arrive at it, or will we find out in retrospect that we just passed it, too late to do anything about it? And is there anything constructive to be learned from those who reach the same crossroads -- either individuals or systems -- but bend, and do not break? More questions than answers, to be sure, but questions that are both timely and need to be asked.
