WBEZ | New Art Project Hopes to Help Vets Talk - 0 views
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art society blog veterans reintegration stories afghanistan vietnam suicide
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A lot of soldiers say war is hell, and then, they won't say anything else. That wasn’t good enough for one west suburban playwright. She’s created a new collaboration called the Vet Art Project. It brings veterans and artists together to make art out of war. The group's vision is a big one: it aims to be a national model for how veterans can tell their stories and get the public to listen.
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Matt Ping sits across the circle from Crist. He’s a young vet who served in Afghanistan. PING: That transition from 16 months of isolation on the side of a mountain, and being secluded from American society and American people and then coming back and trying to be the same person you were before, it's really -- I don’t know if it’s even possible. A recent study by the Rand Corporation found that nearly 20 percent of soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or depression. Only half, seek treatment. Ping says part of the problem is Americans don’t seem to know or care about the war or its soldiers. He recalls being in Afghanistan, in the thick of it, and soldiers not being able to reach anxious family members. PING: And that’s probably why the suicide rates are so high, because that’s the easiest out. I mean, I'm not gonna lie. I sat there with a barrel of a gun in my mouth, thinking about pulling the trigger more than once. And you know I’m glad I didn’t because I was just in an altered state at the time.
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A lot of soldiers say war is hell, and then, they won't say anything else. That wasn't good enough for one west suburban playwright. She's created a new collaboration called the Vet Art Project. It brings veterans and artists together to make art out of war. The group's vision is a big one: it aims to be a national model for how veterans can tell their stories and get the public to listen.