Last weekend, I visited the woodworking school of our contributing editor, George Vondriska. He was hosting an interesting event to help veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). In World War I, they called it “shell shock”; in World War II, the vets came home with “battle fatigue.” Whatever name it goes by, the veterans who live with it call it awful.
As a Navy hospital corpsman in 1974, I saw otherwise healthy men and women returning from Vietnam who were clearly suffering from the trauma they had experienced. Sadly, it was not nearly as well understood then as it is now. According to several reliable sources, nearly 20 percent of the military personnel who have and will serve in Afghanistan and Iraq (and that number stands at about 300,000 people right now …) will develop the symptoms of PTSD. Untreated, it can lead to all sorts of problems, in the vet’s family life as well as professional life.
So what was this interesting event that I visited? (I even helped out just a little bit.) It’s called Build a Vet a Guitar (in conjunction with Guitars For Vets) … but the best idea is to click on the video below and let George tell you about it.
Rob Johnstone, Woodworker’s Journal
Images provided by Krivit Photography
