Sapper -- appreciate your last post-- it is a crappy subject to talk about and most of the time no one feels any better afterwards. I think most of us who have served have had more experience with that subject than we care to admit. I do agree-- sometimes I think there are folks that take the easy/selfish way out- folks that never went outside the wire or experienced war for what it is-- and I share your feelings of anger when those people are memorialized and hero worshipped.
But I also feel... hell I know that I have seen men changed completely from who I knew them as. Their experiences and ability to handle that madness we've seen and things that happened makes it to where the rational side of them has to struggle to hang on and they are literally in a fight for their life, every, single day.
This article:
https://people.com/sports/jason-hairston-wife-speaks-out-about-cte/ helps to explain a good bit about this situation. CTE can only be definitely diagnosed postmortem, HOWEVER- some interesting info on the scans and diagnosis that he went through. The fact that he could feel things slipping and she could see it slipping from him is saddening and terrifying and it goes to show how powerful the affect of those issues can be if they topple someone who had achieved so much. Look back through his posts of his hunts with his dad and his son- no rational person would give that up...
My takeaways from something like this are twofold--
1. It can happen to anyone at anytime- you don't know what everyone is dealing with even if it appears they have it all.
2. If you have a buddy, friend, family member who is walking that line-- whether it is CTE, a stress disorder, or whatever--- surrounding them with people who care and keeping tabs on them is the only way you can make a difference and there are men I know who are alive today living life to the fullest only because people were there to pick them up when they hit the bottom.