Geriatric Mental Health Disaster and Emergency Preparedness

326 Geriatric Mental Health Disaster and Emergency Preparedness
respectfulness, responsibility, fairness, and reverence for life. Overall, there
was a congruence of hopes and values among the three generations of combat
veterans demonstrating more similarities than differences. Perhaps
one impact of a combat experience is a narrowing of the generation gap.
Perhaps the agreement and, to a degree, harmony among these cohorts
teaches us about the impact of adversity and trauma upon the human character
and personality.
Within the environment of war are other aspects of the personality
that may have lain dormant and undeveloped and that, for better or worse,
may now present themselves. The environment of war brings out subtle
and latent aspects of the fundamental character of the person. Often, veterans
will speak of themselves as having two personalities, as in Jekyll and
Hyde : the me I was before combat and the me I became in combat. Many
long for who they were before the war.
Yet all are unwilling to give up the good they identified doing while enduring
much evil. Most veterans cannot recognize a balanced responsibility
and readily take blame for negative outcomes over which they may
have had little or no control. The challenge of therapy is to give veterans the
confidence to acknowledge their own hopes, dreams, and desires to be better
than who they were before, during, and after the war—in other words,
to be who they are now. Just as the organic and psychological growth and
development of a child are shaped by the environment from the womb
through the child ’s early years, it is important for us to consider that we are
not finished products. Rather, we are organic living beings continually in a
process of change, growth, and development as we adapt to the environment
and its changes. Acceptance of the past, of change, and of the present
makes the future possible. When the veteran reconnects with the personal
integrity that always existed within him in a new and meaningful way, he is
free to accept himself and his lived experience and to offer wisdom born
of a whole life lived.
SOME GENERAL IDENTIFYING CHARACTERISTICS OF
EACH OF THE THREE COHORTS OF GERIATRIC VETERANS
If everybody is thinking alike then somebody isn’t thinking.
—G. S. Patton, 1947
There are technically four cohorts of geriatric combat veterans: veterans of
WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. This chapter does not include a discus-