Social Determinants of Health

The shame and judgment that can come with a PTSD diagnosis are common in military veterans. Both of these come from internal and external forces though. Many soldiers feel they should be strong enough to not be affected (pbs, 2017). We learned from our interview with sara that judgment can and does come even from another military member (S. S, personal communication, December 7, 2025). When we are judged verbally it can be hard to speak up and ask for help after. In a 2019 study it was found that shame was responsible completely for the connection between suicidal thoughts and PTSD (Cunningham et al., 2019). Shame is what some researchers call a moral injury, meaning that it is caused by feeling as if you have done something that breaks your standard of morality (U.S. department of Veteran Affairs, 2019). This is worsened by the thing's others say regarding what you have lived through (U.S. department of Veteran Affairs, 2019). An example given by the U.S. department of veteran affairs is when Vietnam vets came home to being called "baby killers" (U.S. department of Veteran Affairs, 2019). If you already believe you are a bad person and someone tells you, you're a bad person then the hole just gets bigger. We need to look at this from a sociological perspective because the only way to help these men and women climb out of this cycle is to change the way we view them so they can do the same. It's not the veterans' fault and we have to reenforce that constantly as a society. The shame cycle has to stop so they can heal.