It's to the best of our knowledge. I'm Anne Strangeamps. How do you heal from a trauma?

We've all read the headlines about post-traumatic stress disorder and how common it is among veterans.

It's a huge mental health issue facing the country. But the truth is, it's not just veterans who suffer from PTSD.

Nearly one in ten Americans will develop it as a result of some kind of traumatic experience.

So think about that. That's the population of Texas. Statistically speaking, you probably know someone who's had PTSD.

I was very much interested in danger and the beauty of violence. And I think as I spent more time

in Iraq and saw more people wounded and saw the war not really improve, I began to question

why I was interested in war and what that had done to my life.

David Morris spent three years reporting in Iraq before an IED explosion forced him to return home.

In the years following, he says he was haunted by the memory of that attack.

Something as simple as the sound of a garbage truck could send him into a full panic.

And this is what's sort of strange about PTSD as you find, and this is true for other veterans I've spoken to, is a lot of times something that will trigger you will not, you won't be able to exactly figure out why it's something that triggers you.

And for some reason, and I don't know why, but dogs barking suddenly

will really set me off. David writes about his experience in his book, The Evil Hours. And one of the

really interesting things about it is that he puts his own personal experience in a much bigger

historic and national context. He really pushes us to rethink conventional explanations of PTSD.

I felt like everything that I heard in the media about it and that I heard from other people

about it was simply a recapitulation of the symptoms, you know, hypervigilance, emotional

numbing, and intrusive symptoms like nightmares and hallucinations. And to me, that was just a list, and it didn't get at the fullness of the story of PTSD,

you know, the story that I think has been most richly told by novelists and poets and playwrights over history.

And I think the scientists are really behind the artists on this one.

They're really just trying to catch up now.

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