Silver Diary

This book was meant to educate people about the terrible effects that PTSD has on families and the people around the affected person. To this end this story is about one young G.I. who spent 18 months in Vietnam and came home with PTSD and how it affected his entire life. Silver Diary tries to portray some of his personal thoughts and some of the day to day events of his life. Approximately 3,000,000 men and women served in Vietnam and according to the VA, some 500,000 were afflicted with PTSD. These men and women were brought back to civilian life and left to fend for themselves without any medical help at all because the VA denied that PTSD was a "sickness" at all. Only just recently the VA has softened the guidelines and acknowledged PTSD as an illness to be recognized and treated accordingly. And the author was one of the 500,000 soldiers who came back with PTSD.