Life can be serious business.

#FacesOfPTSD–Because Not All Wars Are Fought on the battlefield?

Sometimes all it takes for a person who is suffering to reach out for help is to see the face of someone they can identify with. By doing something you already do, nearly every day, you can help make that happen. Let me explain.

Right now, if a person uses an online search engine (Google, Bing) to search “PTSD”, he or she will be directed, almost exclusively, to sites offering information on veterans of war. An image search will lead you to believe only men in uniform get Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

screen shot

What’s troubling is that if that person searching is not a veteran, instead a survivor of a different kind of trauma, and is looking for information or face to identify with, she is possibly left feeling even more isolated and defeated.

If “women and PTSD” is searched, one is left believing a female with PTSD is in a constant state of falling apart.

screen shot2

That is another misrepresentation. Those who suffer with PTSD usually do so while raising children, working 9 to 5 and/or taking care of necessary day to day tasks.

Survivors are professionals at looking “normal” on the outside.

Anyone who goes searching for help deserves to see images that look like PTSD in the real world – faces of moms, dads, children, teachers, social workers, cashiers, nurses, etc. They need to see the real #FacesOfPTSD. Faces that look like mine. #BeReal

What is the #FacesOfPTSD campaign?

#FacesOfPTSD is a social media campaign that will run May 24, 2017-May 31, 2017.

If you identify as having PTSD, share your picture on social media, along with the hashtag #FacesOfPTSD.

Our goal!

To alter the current landscape of social media and search engines (Google, Bing) to include all trauma survivors, particularly women who are rarely represented, in order to reflect more accurately the #FacesOfPTSD.

me and pattiIf only one of these images ends up on the first page of search engines, then this will have been a success!!

It’s important to accurately represent the thousands of women and men living day to day, while doing the best they can to manage flashbacks, constant triggers and the debilitating medical and mental health effects of this disorder. It’s time to recognize the many #FacesOfPTSD.


This campaign is a joint initiative of:

Dawn Daum and Joyelle Brandt of Trigger Points Anthology                                              Contact: triggerpointsanthology@gmail.com

Christine “Cissy” White of Heal Write Now / How to Live On Earth When You Were Raised in Hell  Contact: cissy_white@Comcast.net

Arwen Faulkner of Lilacs in October

Jodie Ortega https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2xYSYLPuy4

2 thoughts on “#FacesOfPTSD–Because Not All Wars Are Fought on the battlefield?”

  1. Dang! I wish that I would have read this earlier. God bless your effort to put faces to PTSD. Indeed the battlefield (a place that I’ve inhabited) is not the only source of PTSD. Perhaps not even the primary source. Rock on!

Leave a comment