Introduction

You simply can’t take a young kid out of a farm town in Saskatchewan and throw them into the battlefield of Afghanistan and expect them to come back unmarked some years later. I was always acutely aware of that when I was sending my young medics out into the field in Afghanistan. Asking young men and women with absolutely no background to wander into a full combat situation and expect them to come back unscarred? That’s not going to happen. It just isn’t. – Military Veteran

Sometimes the extent and horror of situations CAF and RCMP Veterans have faced causes psychological trauma. While grief doesn’t always include trauma, trauma inevitably includes grief. Grief and trauma can overlap, though there are important differences. Trauma can intensify grief reactions and lengthen the time that you experience these intense feelings. This topic will help you to recognize and understand when grief is affected by trauma, including:

• What trauma is and how to identify the signs
• How trauma may impact you and change how you see the world
• How trauma may impact your family
• Hope and finding help

It was probably two years later when I was finally diagnosed with PTSD. Going through the, the process of healing. One, understanding what I’d gone through and understanding why. Just the other day my sister-in-law asked me, “So, do the symptoms get better?” In some regards, yeah, they do. But you can ask my wife, “Do they become less numerous?” Mmm, not really. There are times when I’m wearing a sweater I just have to rip if off because it’s too constraining. So little things like that. But at least I know what I’m dealing with. – RCMP Veteran