In the United States Army Soldiers are required to attend many informative classes. Several of these classes have begun to cover Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - which majority of Soldiers have.

While it is not only caused by war related scenarios, it is usually the cause for many Military Service members. There are many kinds of social environment experienced by Soldiers while on deployment. There are the normal divisions caused by job, rank, gender, race, and age differences and then there are the differences between those who have killed, seen death, injured, been injured, and loss of loved ones.

For some U.S. citizens simply the shock of being in an environment where death is a very real possibility, even if they never leave the base, is enough to cause the mental disorder. It does not matter how much of a "Soldier" you are; deployment changes you and nothing will ever be the same.

 The U.S. Military is a very select society and while there are cohesion issues it is a very tight and closed culture.  The ideology is focused on mission first and bonding. 

For those with civilian spouses there can be an added strain due to the inability of spouses to understand them.  Once a person has been in the military they no longer think in civilian terms and so begins many misunderstandings.

Having someone label a Soldier with any kind of mental disorder weakens the peer confidence that is very vital in a combat situation.  This may be the reasoning for many Soldiers that refuse to seek help from "outside" sources.  Unfortunately when a Soldier doesn't acknowledge or even realize that there are mental issues not dealt with it can cause many problems within the unit they are with.

As every Soldier is affected in some way from stress (not only combat related) the Group Experience can either be supportive or abortive depending on the confidence and cohesion in a unit. 

Poor leadership ethics negatively influence the confidence and cohesion of a unit.  As the War on Terrorism continues more and more inexperienced personnel are selected for leadership there are also those formerly considered unacceptable now being considered as the selection becomes smaller and smaller.  It is comparable to the human anatomy in that if a single joint is out of alignment the entire body is affected.

 As a culture we do not understand War and what it really means.  We have not fought a war on our own grounds nor have been completely involved in a War for many years now.  This is not to say that the past Wars are of little consequence or have no meaning, but in this time and generation we have no understanding of it.

We have ignored that aspect of human life even to the point of "dramatizing" death in insensitive ways.  Violent death is made a distant thing heard about, but never really seen or felt. 

Our minds are no longer properly sensitized to slaughter and death.  It is no longer a common issue to encounter death often and the mind has little or no experience to handle the stress.  In our current war we are taking inexperienced minds and throwing them into a high stress situation; quite frankly, it is a wonder that any come out seemingly sane. 

To avoid cracking under the high Stress encountered in a Combat situation it is imperative to provide the mind a dealing mechanism system which is gained from experience in similar situations.

Before deployment I happened to find an Islamic Extremist myspace page. He had graphic photos of executions and they were very disgusting to see, but I told myself that this is what they want to do to me. It was not something I could pretend away, this was fact and I had to accept it.

In training I had to watch a video of a person who commited suicide. It was shocking, but once again I had to accept it. That is what death looked like. It was real.

I had to ask myself if I felt I could kill someone as the possibility was very real. It was important that I confront myself on everything I could think of as a real aspect of war. If I didn't prepare my mind before deployment then I could never be truly confident in myself.

It is important to know how you truly feel before deployment, because once in that environment and something happens and you didn't take time to be sure before you got in that situation you will always question if you did the right thing. You can never get back to the who you were before it happened and you will never forgive yourself.