Faces of Disorder

As Dana Priest reported in January in the Washington Post, some 2,100 American soldiers attempted suicide or inflicted injuries on themselves last year, about six times the number in 2002. Since then, post-traumatic stress disorder has been getting increasing attention in the media, from The Nation’s investigation of psychological pressure in the Marine Corps to Rolling Stone’s recent profile of the immortalized “Marlboro Marine.” Lance Cpl. James Blake Miller, one of the 500,000 veterans suffering from PTSD, puts a sobering face on the illness, likening his life upon returning home to being “locked inside a hell you can’t escape.” Meanwhile, the New Yorker’s review of Kimberley Peirce’s Stop-Loss — about a soldier who must return for a second tour in Iraq — pegs the film as possibly the definitive film representation of the Iraq War.

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