February 11, 2009 5:30 PM
- Text
Women Vets Struggle With Invisible Wounds
(CBS)
You wouldn't know it to watch war veteran Keri Christensen in action as she rushes around trying to get her two kids off to school, but the 33-year-old wife and mother can barely keep it together.
"There are days that I'll just stop and cry for no reason," Christensen says.
She doesn't look the type to break easily, CBS News correspondent Lee Cowan reports. But after a 10-month stint in Iraq and Kuwait — where she drove convoys through sniper fire, saw her colleagues injured, and lived under the constant fear of roadside bombs — Christensen was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.
"You feel like a part of you is just ... lost and you want to get it back, but you can't," Christensen explains.
She's not alone. Women now make up 15 percent of the active duty force. Between Iraq and Afghanistan, it's the largest wartime deployment ever for women.
Although technically not assigned to combat, in a war with no defined front line, women are finding themselves in combat anyway. They are exposed to exactly the kind of life-and-death situations that contribute to PTSD.
"This is the first time we've had mothers and daughters and sisters coming back into our families and our communities having served in these kinds of situations," says Wayne Gregory, a clinical psychologist with the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Gregory says about a third of the 155,000 women coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan have reported some kind of mental health concern. Many cases go unreported.
What is often the hardest, they say, is the transition from soldier back to mother and caregiver.
Christensen found herself snapping at her kids, and at times was afraid to drive them anywhere — fearing flashbacks to that day her convoy was hit by that roadside bomb.
She doesn't like it that her children have to see her taking medication either, but she says they understand.
"My oldest daughter, Madison, just gives me a hug and tells me, 'It's OK mom, we know it's things that happened in Iraq,' and — God bless them — they're great kids," Christensen says.
Like so many women veterans, she thought the toughest part of being deployed was being away from home. Now it turns out that coming home is just as tough.
"There are days that I'll just stop and cry for no reason," Christensen says.
She doesn't look the type to break easily, CBS News correspondent Lee Cowan reports. But after a 10-month stint in Iraq and Kuwait — where she drove convoys through sniper fire, saw her colleagues injured, and lived under the constant fear of roadside bombs — Christensen was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.
"You feel like a part of you is just ... lost and you want to get it back, but you can't," Christensen explains.
She's not alone. Women now make up 15 percent of the active duty force. Between Iraq and Afghanistan, it's the largest wartime deployment ever for women.
Although technically not assigned to combat, in a war with no defined front line, women are finding themselves in combat anyway. They are exposed to exactly the kind of life-and-death situations that contribute to PTSD.
"This is the first time we've had mothers and daughters and sisters coming back into our families and our communities having served in these kinds of situations," says Wayne Gregory, a clinical psychologist with the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Gregory says about a third of the 155,000 women coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan have reported some kind of mental health concern. Many cases go unreported.
What is often the hardest, they say, is the transition from soldier back to mother and caregiver.
Christensen found herself snapping at her kids, and at times was afraid to drive them anywhere — fearing flashbacks to that day her convoy was hit by that roadside bomb.
She doesn't like it that her children have to see her taking medication either, but she says they understand.
"My oldest daughter, Madison, just gives me a hug and tells me, 'It's OK mom, we know it's things that happened in Iraq,' and — God bless them — they're great kids," Christensen says.
Like so many women veterans, she thought the toughest part of being deployed was being away from home. Now it turns out that coming home is just as tough.
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