"OMG," the new reader appears to shriek, "PTSD can't be CURED, my doctor just told me so!" "He told me I'd have this the rest of my life," with the implication being, "so get used to it." So how can you have the audacity to call this "Healing Combat Trauma?" If PTSD can't be cured...
Well, Lordy, what's in a name? There's a big difference between "healing" and "curing," and the difference is at once subtle, and enormous. A good dictionary, such as the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, would have excellent definitions of each word, and by delving into them, we would understand the nuanced, but dramatic, differences between the two.
Unfortunately, that's not online, and I tossed my actual copy a long time ago. So all I've got is Merriam-Webster online, which isn't nearly as ... intellectually satisfying and precise with language. But let's have a go at it.
"Health," they define as "the condition of being sound in body, mind or spirit"; (hey, we'd like all three, but that's just us); "freedom from disease or pain"; and a "flourishing condition." Great.
"Healing," by extension, would be returning someone TO that condition. "Curing" would be reversing a disease process. And "treating" would just be the basic addressing of any condition by any therapeutic method, without regard to whether it worked or not.
From personal experience now. Taking a combat veteran with decades of severe, chronic PTSD around to various "treatments," after a particularly successful session, he would want to pronounce himself "cured." Which always provoked a conversation about really, what did "cure" mean, and was it likely to be a one-shot experience? Do this, feel better; great, now you're cured. Nope, not likely. Not from something as insidious, and comprehensively destructive in so many ways, over so many years, as PTSD from combat can be.
I tried to change the conversation. Healing was a better metric than curing; because "curing" implied a single event, a toggle switch that could be flipped between "sick" one day and "well" the next. Healing, on the other hand, was a progression. A whole continuum between being very sick...and being relatively healthy. And any point along that path. Somehow "healing" seemed more attractive and functionally useful a concept than "curing." Can PTSD be cured? Can the veteran with PTSD be healed? Better question. And what will healing look like? It may be when the symptoms that plagued you are somehow more manageable, and the destructive effects of PTSD are affecting the life of the veteran -- and consequently his family and loved ones -- less and less.
Healing or cure? I'll go for healing, every time. It's a path, not a toggle switch. It's not a pill, it's a process. And it's eminently achievable. Don't give up hope. It's part of how you get there. And every little bit COUNTS.
