Interesting. My uncle, who is a very conservative Baptist pastor today, fought in Vietnam, in the infantry as a radio operator, which was an extremely high-casualty billet. (Snipers would look for the whip antennas of field radios and target the operators.)

He'll tell you that he was extremely traumatized by his experiences, by the horrors he witnessed on his tour. For several years after he returned, he was barely functional. He would jump at the slightest noise, he often didn't even want to leave his house, and he he came addicted to several substances.

Classic PTSD.

He doesn't argue that at all. He knows too many Vietnam vets who had similar experiences.

The nuance is that he claims Christianity offered him a road back to health. Maybe it did. Certainly, once he had a conversion experience and dived head first into Baptist life, he turned his life around for the better.

Plenty of traumatized military veterans have taken routes similar to that. It's indisputable that close community and support are healing.

But he doesn't take the leap to say that PTSD does not exist or that psychological help is not important. I think the reason for that is that he knows too many other vets who have found other roads to health than the one he found.