Ptsd In The Things They Carried

Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is when an individual has difficulty recovering from a traumatic event. PTSD is common in The Things They Carried, written by Tim O’Brien. because it took place during the Vietnam war. We can recognize a few characters from the story that have PTSD are the following: Mary Anne, Dave Jensen and Norman Bowker.

Individuals demonstrate PTSD with symptoms, such as: flashbacks, severe paranoia, insomnia, social isolation, self destructive behavior, emotional detachment, fear, severe anxiety, and etc. According to statistics, individuals with severe PTSD are at high risk for committing suicide. Veterans are more prone to this disorder due to the fact that they are emotionally unstable and have difficulties re-adjusting to a normal life once they come back from combat.

Mary Anne clearly shows the symptom “social isolation" for a post traumatic stress disorder. She was a normal civilian who managed to get to Vietnam secretly because her boyfriend was serving. She ended up seeing the realities of the Vietnam War and turned emotionally distraught due to being introduced to inhumane things. In effect to a

His symptoms were more noticeable because he had multiple. Symptoms for Dave Jensen include: insomnia, fear, and severe paranoia and anxiety. All these symptoms started to occur after a fistfight against another member in his battalion. Anxiety and fear is seen within him not so long after a fistfight: “Dave Jensen started to worry. It was mostly in his head.”(O’Brien, 60) Proof of Dave Jensen’s insomnia and paranoia.: “At night he had trouble sleeping -- a skittish feeling- always on guard, hearing strange noises in the dark, imagining a grenade rolling into his fox hole or the tickle of a knife against his ear.”(O’ Brien). The result of his PTSD, is that due to his symptoms he became more emotionally unstable, which led him to shooting a whole round of