"People with PTSD are afflicted with three primary types of symptoms. The first type of symptoms involves all manner of intrusive memories of the event that often come with startling clarity via flashbacks and nightmares. Along with anything else that reminds a person of the trauma, these intrusive memories produce profound psychological distress and physical symptoms, such as a pounding heart. The second type of symptoms revolves around avoidance and emotional numbing. Bedeviled as they are by unwanted memories, images, nightmares and flashbacks that keep the terrifying reality of their experience emotionally alive for them, people with PTSD often go to heroic lengths to avoid anything in the personal or physical environment that reminds them of the trauma. They often also report feeling emotionally deadened, unable to love and disinterested in things others find pleasurable. Often they feel like they will die young or have less of a future than other people. The third and final symptom domain of PTSD is known as hyperarousal. Hyperarousal symptoms include difficulty falling or staying asleep, irritability or outbursts of anger, difficulty concentrating, being hypervigilant and finally, demonstrating an exaggerated startle response. These PTSD symptoms usually don't travel alone, unfortunately, but are frequently accompanied by depression and difficulties with drugs and alcohol."

"I have instructed the Joint Chiefs, and up and down the chain of command, that they have a responsibility to de-stigmatize mental health issues and issues of PTSD, and help to explain to everybody in all of the units under their command that there's nothing weak about asking for help."

"Recent research has suggested that the association between PTSD and suicide is driven by comorbid depression (e.g., DeBeer et al., 2016), so it is notable that the studies presented here all covaried for depression diagnosis or symptom severity, suggesting that anger uniquely contributes to suicide risk in the context of PTSD (Dillon et al., 2020a; Hawkins et al. 2014; Wilks et al., 2019). Overall, there is evidence that among individuals with PTSD, comorbid dysregulated anger significantly increases risk for engaging in both interpersonal and self-directed aggression. Furthermore, increased anger appears to play a mediating role between PTSD and these negative outcomes (e.g., Bhardwaj, 2019; Dillon et al., 2020b)."