Richard J. Thomas

Wounded Minds: Life on the Dark Plateau of Ptsd Richard J. Thomas

Wounded Minds is a lynch pin for those veterans who believe no one cares about their past, and functions as a curtain for society to step through in order to see and feel the veterans trauma first hand. It is about the dark plateau in the mind that the warriors of our country are exiled to after they are subjugated to trauma and suffering that is created by physical injuries and horrific images of combat as they continue to carry out the mission assigned to them, even as they are tending to their wounded. It is a vehicle that will better enable our culture to appreciate some of the loss of direction that can occur in later years to our young people involved in Afghanistan and Iraq. All carry the silent burden that has been forever imprinted into their memories, but combat veterans will now be able to look at themselves and recognize a common bond of "I've been there too. . . . . " Not all wounds suffered in combat are physical and PTSD that began for the author in 1983 would tear at his mind for twenty two years and shove him to the abyss of suicide before being diagnosed in 2004, so that he could begin receiving treatment and medication for the torment that the injury to his left leg was causing, something for which employers and relatives all those years had construed as an 'attitude' rather than an underlying serious neurological problem from wounds. The gravity of Wounded Minds is such that the story will have positive consequences for everyone who knows a combat veteran, and be able to bridge the communication gap to that person, in particular if they are stuck on the edifice that has become 'The dark plateau of PTSD'.