Autoethnographic Family Case Study: Combat Veteran PTSD and its Effects on Familial Dynamics, Parenting, and Marriage

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among combat veterans remains an urgent and, for some, unmanageable problem for those who have served in war, as well as their family members. This paper focuses on how familial dynamics are deeply affected by veterans returning with PTSD, especially after severe combat exposure. We examined the familial dynamics of PTSD in combat veterans by presenting an autoethnographic case study. One of the authors was a US combat veteran and wrote his personal account of social reintegration with his family after returning from multiple combat deployments. This autoethnographic case study is used to examine the family dynamics of a combat veteran and his family to present this argument. We argue that one of the reasons that combat-related PTSD remains so difficult to treat is due to the limited intervention strategies to treat individuals with PTSD within the family system. Ultimately, there are three contributing factors that currently hinder the ability to successfully treat and reintegrate combat veterans diagnosed with PTSD without alienating them from their family system. The first is a failure to look at family systems theory as a therapeutic intervention to treat the individual with PTSD, as well as those affected by the shift of the family dynamics. The second related issue is the effect of attachment prior, during, and after the deployment and development of PTSD. The third is to look at Moral Injury to understand another face of trauma that can be misdiagnosed as PTSD, affecting morals and values held by the family system.