"Why is there such a higher precentage of PTSD in American Veterans vs. Israeli Vrterans?"
After a debate last evening with my older sister, I decided I might as well post a bit about the points we have raised. Me and my sisters grew up in Israel, my sister served in the IDF as a laborantic, and I am drifted to join in January of 2018 (I think?). So, here we were, discussing the differences between Israel and America due to elders complaining about shit that would make sense in America, not in Israel, when she brought up the point of PTSD. And so we get to the point, why do American veteran suffer from PTSD more than Israelis? The first answer she brought, was that the IDF is mainly defensive, while the American army is sent out to foreign lands to fight on a politician's whim. The answer I gave, however, is a bit different. Growing up in Israel, most of my childhood memories involve hiding in safe places, and even going into a stranger's house during a war because of an alarm and playing a card game with them, which, in Israel, is seen as completely normal. And so comes the question, why don't we suffer from PTSD? Being civilians growing up in Israel, the Middle Eastern country who most other countries would like to destroy, obviously had an impact on us, like the instinct to bolt at the first note of an alarm (Which, so many English songs I like use, UGH), but, we don't get PTSD like America. Because Americans aren't as revealed to war as we are, being more sheltered than us makes it much easier for you to suffer from PTSD, like a person growing up near dogs won't be afraid of them, and won't let an agressive dog scare them off of dogs forever, versus a person who only ever knew of dogs through books and sometimes media, and would be much more affected by an experience with an aggressive dog, and might be scared off of dogs untill they get therapy, or a fixing experience. So, just so people know, this was me pointing out pure, strictly cut facts from my point of view of the world, and now, for some opinions of what I wrote, and explained, here: I do not like the fact that I grew up in Israel, not that Israel is a bad country, but rather the circumstances of me growing up were bad, as are in most countries in war. Should I decide to have kids, and the world would still have them, I would perfer to have kids in a safe country, inwhich they would not be as used to war, to the point of normalizing it. With that, I am absolutely *not* saying that victims of PTSD are invalid just because I grew up in war and they were revealed to it much later in life. Everyone has their own experiences, and no one can take away the experience nor it's results, just because they've 'had it worse'. Everyone is subjected to their own amount of pain and problems, there is no reason to nor any logic behind measuring it, because people are simply too different to be compared like that. And on that note, please remember everything I wrote was from my personal, biased, world view, and I am just seventeen years old, please, feel free to start a discussion with me, if you do so, do so in a respectable manner.