Claims Task-J6128

1. Even less understood is the collateral damage, to families, to schools, to society—emotional and fiscal costs borne long after the war is over.

• This claim suggests that PTSD affects more than the person who is suffering from the mental disorder- therefore someone who is suffering from PTSD can cause problems in personal relationships (physical and or emotional)
• The claim further suggests that the emotional symptoms of PTSD continue to be present in a veteran’s life even after they return home from war
• The costs to treat someone with PTSD also continue to affect them as well as their families
• The claim addresses someone’s PTSD symptoms affect on families, schools and society goes unnoticed because to others ex: Doctors, because the symptoms of the disease are easier to diagnose and treat than tackling on the problem of how the disease affects those around them
• The claim would be more effective by using data on how many families are affected from loved ones suffering from PTSD as well as the financial costs to treat patients with PTSD
• The claim should have provided more detail as to how families, schools and society are affected by loved ones suffering from PTSD
• But the claim sets the stage for Caleb’s and Brannan’s story about how PTSD affects their family

2. Imagine there’s a murderer in your house. And it is dark outside, and the electricity is out. Imagine your nervous system spiking, readying you as you feel your way along the walls, the sensitivity of your hearing, the tautness in your muscles, the alertness shooting around inside your skull. And then imagine feeling like that all the time.

• The claim effectively describes using descriptive language what is it like for someone suffering with PTSD
• The claim addresses how a patient suffering from the disease feels dark, tense and hypervigilant by describing “how dark it is outside, nervous system spiking and alertness shooting around inside your skull”
•  The claim reveals what it is like for a PTSD patient inside their body
• The claim also effectively introduces Caleb’s symptoms in the following paragraph  

3. Brannan and Caleb can be tense with their own agitation, and tense about each other’s.

• This claim shows how PTSD affect not only Caleb, but his wife as well- who happens to be his caregiver
• The claim also supports the article’s argument of how PTSD is contagious- in a sense that those who suffer PTSD affect those around them as well
• This claim helps lead into the following paragraphs of how Brannan’s symptoms affect her everyday life from living with her husband who suffers from PTSD  

4. This PTSD picture is worse than some, but much better, Brannan knows, than those that have devolved into drug addiction and rehab stints and relapses.

• The claim doesn’t effectively describe cases of PTSD that are worse than drug addictions, rehab stints and relapses
• Brannan’s opinion is not a credible source to relate PTSD to drug addiction, rehab stints and relapses 
• This claim should have been omitted because it does not support the article’s argument effectively and might be offensive to others who have suffered or had loved ones suffer from drug addictions, rehab stints and relapses because their experience could have been quite different than what Brannan’s experience is with her husband suffering from PTSD

5. It’s kind of hard to understand Caleb’s injuries. Even doctors can’t say for sure exactly why he has flashbacks

• The claim suggests that PTSD is difficult to treat even for doctors they are used to dealing with “more severe injuries”- that aren’t mental. 
• The claim effectively suggests that you can’t tell someone has PTSD by looking at them, it requires thorough treatment that even doctors have a difficult time doing and explaining why the symptoms occur  

6. Some hypotheses for why PTSD only tortures some trauma victims blame it on unhappily coded proteins, or a misbehaving amygdala. Family history, or maybe previous trauma

• This claim suggests PTSD is probably caused by stressful experiences/trauma and inherited mental health risks or malfunctions in DNA coded proteins
• The claim should have provided research collected to support the argument  

7. Whatever is happening to Caleb, it’s as old as war itself. 

• The claim suggests that PTSD is not a new phenomenon
• The claim leads into the discussion that the disease has been overlooked or misdiagnosed as some other psychiatric condition

8. You can’t see Caleb’s other wound either.

• This claim leads into the comparison of Caleb’s physical symptoms of PTSD to his internal symptoms that are not easy to diagnose and treat
• This claim suggests that the disorder can be hidden in plain sight- making it difficult to identify
• This is a persuasive argument to show the reader than that the disease is debilitating to caleb’s life internally and externally

9. But there’s still a lot about brain damage that doctors, much less civilians, don’t understand.

• The claim does not address what doctors and civilians don’t understand about brain damage
• The claim is not necessary because the previous claim “You can’t see Caleb’s other wound either”- leads into the same argument of how the disease is hard to treat, so therefore this claim can be omitted
• The claim should have addressed how the disease is difficult to treat as well as not enough research conducted which makes it harder for doctor and let alone civilians to understand  

10. Trauma is a contagious disease; it affects everyone that has close contact with a traumatized person” in some form or another, to varying degrees and for different lengths of time.

• This claim supports the author’s story line of how Brannan husband’s PTSD affected her and their daughter 
• But the claim does not effectively address how the trauma is contagious in varying degree and different lengths- therefore that part can be omitted because it doesn’t support the main argument for the article  

11. “She mirrors…she just mirrors” her dad’s behavior

• This claim effectively shows how the daughter is affected by her father’s PTSD which therefore supports the articles argument of how the disease is contagious
• The claim leads into how the daughter is affected by her father’s diseases by describing events at school that cause her to lash out in anger because she learns it at home from her parents