PTSD in drone operators?

[Formless]

When I first came across this story I skimmed part of it, thought it was interesting, and bookmarked it for later. Thought it would be an interesting look into what the US drone program was like (and it is). But then when I later went back to read it I came across this part and knew I just had to share it with the forum:

At the urging of a Vietnam veteran he met at the local VA office, Bryant finally went to see a therapist. After a few sessions, he just broke down: “I told her I wanted to be a hero, but I don’t feel like a hero. I wanted to do something good, but I feel like I just wasted the last six years of my life.” She diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder.

It was an unexpected diagnosis. For decades the model for understanding PTSD has been “fear conditioning”: quite literally the lasting psychological ramifications of mortal terror. But a term now gaining wider acceptance is “moral injury.” It represents a tectonic realignment, a shift from a focusing on the violence that has been done to a person in wartime toward his feelings about what he has done to others—or what he’s failed to do for them. The concept is attributed to the clinical psychiatrist Jonathan Shay, who in his book Achilles in Vietnam traces the idea back as far as the Trojan War. The mechanisms of death may change—as intimate as a bayonet or as removed as a Hellfire—but the bloody facts, and their weight on the human conscience, remain the same. Bryant’s diagnosis of PTSD fits neatly into this new understanding. It certainly made sense to Bryant. “I really have no fear,” he says now. “It’s more like I’ve had a soul-crushing experience. An experience that I thought I’d never have. I was never prepared to take a life.”

In 2011, Air Force psychologists completed a mental-health survey of 600 combat drone operators. Forty-two percent of drone crews reported moderate to high stress, and 20 percent reported emotional exhaustion or burnout. The study’s authors attributed their dire results, in part, to “existential conflict.” A later study found that drone operators suffered from the same levels of depression, anxiety, PTSD, alcohol abuse, and suicidal ideation as traditional combat aircrews. These effects appeared to spike at the exact time of Bryant’s deployment, during the surge in Iraq. (Chillingly, to mitigate these effects, researchers have proposed creating a Siri-like user interface, a virtual copilot that anthropomorphizes the drone and lets crews shunt off the blame for whatever happens. Siri, have those people killed.)

Yeah.... always missing the point, the military. Somehow, if thousands of miles distance can't change the stress of killing, I doubt some fancy anthropomorphized interface will change anything. In fact, I hope not.

[Grumman]

(Chillingly, to mitigate these effects, researchers have proposed creating a Siri-like user interface, a virtual copilot that anthropomorphizes the drone and lets crews shunt off the blame for whatever happens. Siri, have those people killed.)

Yeah.... always missing the point, the military. Somehow, if thousands of miles distance can't change the stress of killing, I doubt some fancy anthropomorphized interface will change anything. In fact, I hope not.

Yeah, while it would be a good thing if we found better ways to help people cope with unwarranted guilt, passing the buck like this is bad for the same reason "just following orders" is bad.

[Starglider]

Yeah, while it would be a good thing if we found better ways to help people cope with unwarranted guilt, passing the buck like this is bad for the same reason "just following orders" is bad.

Noooo, we absolutely need to do this research, Hollywood has shown us that all the best sci-fi machine revolt scenarios require the central AI to have a sexy female avatar with a seductive yet sinister female voice. I for one support an intuitive user interface on the upcoming Skynet killbots.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Yeah, while it would be a good thing if we found better ways to help people cope with unwarranted guilt, passing the buck like this is bad for the same reason "just following orders" is bad.

Noooo, we absolutely need to do this research, Hollywood has shown us that all the best sci-fi machine revolt scenarios require the central AI to have a sexy female avatar with a seductive yet sinister female voice. I for one support an intuitive user interface on the upcoming Skynet killbots.

Nod-Nod!
Especially as brain-machine interfaces advance further. We all need a Cortana to let soldiers switch off their brains to become AI controlled killing machines!
I support this notion! Also, I am a Human. I am writing this with appendages made of flesh. I am completely composed of a meatbag.
Go humans!




Sidenote:
I won't comment on the psychology/DSM aspect of the reclassification of PTSD beyond saying that this sounds very...iffy to me.
(Grouping something very different under one umbrella is a superb way to make a diagnosis easier, treatment money more politically achievable, and to make research/treatment useless. Think autism, ánxiety disorders'...

I do know that one theory has it that drone pilots suffer high levels of PTSD due to the lack of a 'seperate' social framework. Shooting up terrorists then picking your kids up from your neighbour Ibrahim involves a lot of cognitive reshuffling on a structural/sytematic level, especially as opposed to being immersed in a social framework where everyone else is doing the same thing as you, and your personality can 'shift' to suit your current roal as a soldier.

[Formless]

(Chillingly, to mitigate these effects, researchers have proposed creating a Siri-like user interface, a virtual copilot that anthropomorphizes the drone and lets crews shunt off the blame for whatever happens. Siri, have those people killed.)

Yeah.... always missing the point, the military. Somehow, if thousands of miles distance can't change the stress of killing, I doubt some fancy anthropomorphized interface will change anything. In fact, I hope not.

Yeah, while it would be a good thing if we found better ways to help people cope with unwarranted guilt, passing the buck like this is bad for the same reason "just following orders" is bad.

The really stupid thing is, the proposal is to create a "virtual co-pilot" that they can blame for actually pulling the trigger: but the article itself is about a guy whose job was to spot targets and do all the aiming, while his actual co-pilot pulled the trigger for the hellfire missiles. The spotter still developed PTSD even with a real human being sitting next to him to shift blame onto.

Frankly, the military is largely responsible for popularizing the diagnosis of PTSD, but veterans aren't the only ones who come down with it. Crime victims, disaster survivors... if a crisis of conscience and guilt complex (say, survivor's guilt instead of "I killed someone" guilt) are a major part of what stresses people out to a pathological degree, then trying to solve it only by making it easier for soldiers to rationalizing violence means others with the problem, or even soldiers whose problem comes from aspects of war, means they aren't solving PTSD for anyone. Its just a bandaid. Besides the fact that, IMO, it shouldn't be easy to take a life on the whim of orders.

Sidenote:
I won't comment on the psychology/DSM aspect of the reclassification of PTSD beyond saying that this sounds very...iffy to me.
(Grouping something very different under one umbrella is a superb way to make a diagnosis easier, treatment money more politically achievable, and to make research/treatment useless. Think autism, ánxiety disorders'...

There is admittedly some truth to this in that there are as many as 636,120 combinations of symptoms that can mean PTSD. I don't think that diminishes the experience for those that suffer from it-- indeed, I would be surprised if there wasn't a large variety of ways people personally experience mental suffering. Diagnoses are just clinical tools, after all. But since you mention Anxiety disorders, perhaps that is one way to fix the problem? Right now, its classified under the general label of anxiety disorders, but maybe it can be made its own category or subcategory. Something like "Existential Stress" maybe-- has a nice pretentious philosophical ring to it.

[Alyrium Denryle]

(Chillingly, to mitigate these effects, researchers have proposed creating a Siri-like user interface, a virtual copilot that anthropomorphizes the drone and lets crews shunt off the blame for whatever happens. Siri, have those people killed.)

Yeah.... always missing the point, the military. Somehow, if thousands of miles distance can't change the stress of killing, I doubt some fancy anthropomorphized interface will change anything. In fact, I hope not.

Yeah, while it would be a good thing if we found better ways to help people cope with unwarranted guilt, passing the buck like this is bad for the same reason "just following orders" is bad.

The problem is, it is not exactly unwarranted guilt. Those drones DO kill civilians, and often not by accident. The guys doing the aiming dont necessarily know they are killing non-combatants, but they know they CAN be, if not intentionally then as collateral damage.

[Nephtys]

This has been floating around for a while. PTSD or similar sorts of issues for UAV Operators is surprisingly common. Studies are currently underway to better understand how living stateside while doing this as a dayjob affects them. In a combat theater, you're never 'out' of the environment. But when you can go home and have dinner with the family, I can imagine that being a LOT harder, to have that sort of emotional context switch.

[Formless]

I imagine that being stateside also means being exposed to a lot more criticism of the war and of drone strikes in particular than an infantryman who goes on patrol from the instant he wakes up and goes to sleep in a barracks surrounded by colleges.

[Sea Skimmer]

PTSD in drone operators was first being reported in IIRC 2006. It need not involve civilians, some people, maybe and probably a lot of people, just don't respond well to high resolution thermal imaged blood splatter and body parts flying a hundred feet, all the more so from someone who could not possibly threaten them. Plenty of people get PTSD without ever killing a civilian or even shooting at one. It is hardly a requirement. See WW1 and WW2 where much fighting took place with no civilians at all present, and yet cases numbered in the hundreds of thousands if not realistically millions (the standard was set high to be counted) for the US alone.

[Alyeska]

This type of issue was covered in my Vietnam Lit class back in college. Bomber Crew members developed PTSD in Vietnam. People who were relatively removed from combat and the immediate experience of killing people. It does not surprise me in the least that UAV operators are developing PTSD.

[Ritterin Sophia]

PTSD in drone operators was first being reported in IIRC 2006. It need not involve civilians, some people, maybe and probably a lot of people, just don't respond well to high resolution thermal imaged blood splatter and body parts flying a hundred feet, all the more so from someone who could not possibly threaten them. Plenty of people get PTSD without ever killing a civilian or even shooting at one. It is hardly a requirement. See WW1 and WW2 where much fighting took place with no civilians at all present, and yet cases numbered in the hundreds of thousands if not realistically millions (the standard was set high to be counted) for the US alone.

It needn't even be civilian casualties that causes it, think about those guys who have to sit there and are forced to watch other soldiers die because lag and unreliable comms means they can't warn them or the necessary assets to help them can't be called in to help, that drone operator still has to sit there and watch half a dozen of what he assumes to be good people drive right into an IED or get gunned down in a firefight after being ambushed and the entire time he sits there he's completely helpless to do anything.