Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma

Last week, Alysa Landry at the Daily Times in Farmington, New Mexico penned a moving three-part series on veterans suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Part one, Combat that Never Ends, tells the stories of Vietnam veterans who have wrestled with PTSD for decades, but only recently been diagnosed or treated. In part two, The Front Lines Shift... Military Veterans Face Varying Battles, veterans from Iraq repeat the pattern. In fact, Robert Udero of the Farmington Veteran Center says the proportion of veterans suffering from PTSD may be nearly three times higher for Iraq than for Vietnam. Part three, The Search for Combat Trauma Solutions, turns from veterans' suffering to their treatment and recovery. It ends by returning to John Collard, who we met in part one with a gun in his mouth, fighting back two-decade-old memories of the year he spent "covered in blood" as a medic in Vietnam. He was diagnosed with PTSD and began treatment five years ago.

"At 60 years old, I'm about to get my life together," he said. "It's been since 1969 that I've been dealing with this, and to this day, I look back and it's still hard to make sense of it. But I'm 60 years old and I have a future."