Wait, what?

[agilebrit]

Three to six months???

REALLY? That's all the time they take for PTSD treatment?

...

REALLY???

I find myself somewhat gobsmacked by that. And I guess they don't mean that the person would be "all better" by then, but...damn.

And I'm thinking not!Harry would take much longer than that, because (a)he won't take the drugs, and (b)the bad guys had him for a good long while and addicted him to heroin. Multiple times.

But this makes me wonder if I shouldn't, perhaps, move my timeline a bit so his captivity in Afghanistan happened eighteen months or two years ago instead of three years ago...

Comments

[dragonflymuse.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't alter the timeline based on the one reference. I have known women still suffering PSTD symptoms several years after assaults/rapes. Goodness knows war vets prove that treatment pathways or timelines don't dictate recovery.

I say stick to how you've written it. Even if some reader considers that suffering PTSD episodes three years after the causative event is too long to be susceptible to triggers, they reinforce the impact the event had on your character and his sensitivity to such brutality.

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

He's both tougher and more fragile than he looks, and I walk a fine line with him. I just wonder if making the triggering event happen two years ago instead of three would lend more... reality (for want of a better word--I want some verisimilitude in my nanotech werewolf fiction, dammit!) to his situation.

[dragonflymuse.livejournal.com]

I want some verisimilitude in my nanotech werewolf fiction, dammit!

LOL! There is nothing about that sentence that isn't utterly fantastic!

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

Well, you know...if you can convince your reader that you know what you're talking about in one tiny area, they'll follow you anywhere. So, if I get this right, they're more likely to forgive me any slips in the nanotech and lycanthropy parts. :)

[upstart-crow.livejournal.com]

I have PTSD (though not as bad as a prisoner of war or a survivor of a rape). If you'd like to talk to me at any time about what it feels like to experience it, I'm more than willing to help :) (with the caveat, of course, that his PTSD is much more complex than mine which has flashbacks that are a lot easier to deal with)

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

I...may take you up on that. Possibly on the way to LTUE? Thank you!

Mostly, right now, I'm just questioning my timeline a little. I can drop it back a year with no real repercussions to the plot (it's a plot point that we're approaching the anniversary of when it happened, so dropping it to two years isn't a stretch). I may do it anyway, just so it's a little more, IDK, immediately in his past.