Wounded warrior Joey Jones squashes the notion that millennials have PTSD as a result of the 2016 presidential election. (Image source: Fox News video screenshot)A double-amputee veteran has taken exception to the notion and accompanying study that some millennials are suffering from PTSD because Hillary Clinton did not win the 2016 presidential election.
Joey Jones addressed the idea head-on during Wednesdays Fox & Friends.
What did he say?
Jones, a retired U.S. Marine Corps bomb tech, appeared during a Wednesday segment on the Fox News show to discuss the findings of the recent study as well as PTSD at large.
First of all, Jones began, [PTSD] isnt a negative thing; its something that a lot of men and women suffer from because they were put into a traumatic experience, but when we really start to pull back the layers on these thousands of military service members who were diagnosed with PTSD, what we learned is that its a dramatic and its a blatant misnomer across the board.
The vet went on to note that many service members who have PTSD have had traumas in their past, and the horror of war only exacerbates that in some cases.
When you pull back the layers on the onion, these men and women had traumas as a child: They had a divorce, they had things that happened in their social lives with the people they care about before they ever went to war, he explained. What happens is war kind of rips that scab off, and it revealed these things. We have a lot of people diagnosed with PTSD that never went to war.
Jones explained that it hardly seems appropriate for people who have never served in combat zones to appropriate the diagnosis of PTSD simply because they dont like something theyre seeing or hearing.
What Im getting at is that this misdiagnosis, that Let me take that banner [of PTSD] and put it on my life, its creeping into our civilian lives as well, he said. And so you know have people claiming to have [PTSD] because they feel discomfort and uncertainty.
Let me tell you something, he continued. What these people felt might be a self-imposed stress disorder, but its the equivalent to a bad hair day. Its not the equivalent to putting your buddy into a bag, its not the equivalent to trying to save someones life and watching it slip away in the middle of combat.
Jones went on to blast the appropriation as disgusting and offensive to those who clinically suffer from PTSD, and specifically those who have served their country.
We dont understand what the mind goes through in combat yet; we think we do, the pendulums just swung in a different direction, so now we blanket this disorder when it fact its much deeper than that and to have someone dishonor and really take a shot at those men and women who are suffering because they dont enjoy Trumps rhetoric, its really kind of disgusting, he said.
Jones concluded with a stark message to those who havent served their country during times of war.
You can take your studies, your degrees, your entitled opinions, and claim whatever you would like, he said. What this country needs is men and women of strong mind and strong faith. Thats who serves this country. Unfortunately, those are the people who truly have suffered from PTSD but thankfully, theyre strong enough and we believe in them enough that well get them through it.
Men and women recover daily from disorders of post-traumatic stress, and simply being upset over an election doesnt rate something like that, Jones concluded.
You can listen to the veterans full remarks in the video player below.
