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PTSD. We Gotta Get Out of This Place
Post-Covid PTSD: the next epidemic wave. Survivors, family, health workers. Connect, manage stress, build small positive habits, listen. It’s a family affair. For Frank.
Proem
During the hot and sweaty summer of 1972, I worked as a nurse’s aide at the Detroit Psychiatric Institute. The veteran staff shunned and isolated this young, ignorant, white boy from the burbs purposefully leaving me vulnerable as I walked in the hallways in fear among young inner-city Institute residents. They expressed their psychosis with violence at the staff and each other. No air conditioning, old brick building, hot, hot, hot. Suddenly the Animals singing, We Gotta Get Out of This Place (if it’s the last thing we ever do) piped in from the radio speakers into the unit. Everybody cracked up. The spell broke. I was safe for a few hours. Barry Man and Cynthia Weil wrote this tune in 1965. Initially, the song played at proms — getting out of high school. Soon military forces in Vietnam adopted it as an anthem, aching to go home from war. At 16, I started working as a draft counselor at a downtown church, learning the regs to help young men avoid the draft and soldiers to figure out how to get out of the army. I figured if I could learn draft counseling, perhaps I could avoid going to Vietnam. That experience with returning soldiers was my first with PTSD — Post-Traumatic…
