Traumatized veterans tend to be diagnosed as experiencing a psychiatric disorder and approved a regimen of psychotherapy and psychiatric drugs. But why, asks psychologist Paula J. Caplan with this impassioned publication, is it a mental disease to become devastated by war or various other intolerable experiences such as for example military sexual assault? Exactly what is a emotionally healthful response to death, damage, and moral horror? In When Johnny and Jane Arrive Marching Home, Caplan argues that the standard treatment of about When Johnny and Jane Come Marching Home:How Most of us MIGHT HELP Veterans therapy and medications is often actually dangerous. It adds to veterans’ burdens by making them believe wrongly that they must have ‘obtained over it’; it isolates them behind the shut doors of the therapist’s workplace; and it creates them rely on often harmful medications. The numbers of traumatized veterans from past and present wars who continue to suffer demonstrate the ineffectiveness of this approach. Sending anguished veterans off to talk to therapists, writes Caplan, conveys the message that the rest of us don’t desire to listen-or that people don’t feel qualified to listen. As a result, the truth about war is certainly held under wraps. Most of us remain ignorant in what war is really like-and continue to allow our governments to visit war without much protest. Caplan proposes an alternative solution: that people welcome veterans back into our areas and listen to their tales, one-on-one. (She provides guidelines for conducting these discussions.) This would begin a long overdue national debate about the realities of war, and it could start the healing up process for our returning veterans.