Unit 3 – Case study
Case Study: Invisible Wounds — Living with PTSD
I want to close out this unit’s video material with a piece that puts real faces to the theory.
This short film brings together several British military veterans, all diagnosed with PTSD, describing their experience in their own words — not narrated over, not clinically framed, just their own accounts. You’ll hear the exact symptom clusters covered in “Trauma and the Aftermath” show up directly: hypervigilance (one veteran describes checking behind bins on the way to the chip shop, “in case I got a tote”), the numbing and loss of interest that can follow trauma, and the years-long delay before several of them recognised what they were actually experiencing.
What I’d ask you to notice in particular: several of these men describe genuine shame around asking for help — “you’re not trained to ask for help” — which connects directly to something we discussed earlier in this unit about how trauma responses are so often misread, by others and by the person themselves.
It closes on a note I think is worth sitting with: PTSD doesn’t disappear, but every person in this film describes building a genuine, meaningful life alongside it. That’s not a small thing to hear directly from people who’ve lived it.
A brief content note: this film includes brief descriptions of combat and casualties in its opening moments. Nothing graphic, but worth knowing before you press play. If anything in this unit has raised something personal for you, please don’t carry it alone — speak with a GP, a mental health professional, or a support service in your area.
