Former Marine Disappears - CoD Connection?
Post-traumatic stress disorder sufferer and former US marine Eric W. Hall disappeared last week after leaving a family member's house in Deep Creek, FL. Hall returned from Iraq three years ago with a severe leg injury from a bombing - a bombing that also decapitated his close friend.
Hall had been playing Call of Duty before he vanished and there's naturally some thought that the game might have been a psychological trigger of some kind for the former marine - especially in light of the fact that before his sudden disappearance, Hall's relatives say he had been using his hand like a gun to shoot imaginary people as well as talking into an imaginary radio at his shoulder.
According to the wife of Hall's cousin:
"He just got up and said he had to go," Courtney Birge said about the day Hall disappeared. "He's a son, a grandson, a cousin and a brother. We are not going to stop until we get him home."
We wish the safe return of the 24 year-old veteran to his family, and would like to point out that while video games may not be the root cause of violence or mental illness (indeed, it would seem like the violence of war would be the cause in this case), conditions like PTSD and other sensitivities to representations of extreme behavior of any kind should always be taken seriously.
Marine may be evading search effort [Herald Tribune]
[via Kotaku]
tiny dancer
Posted to Hot Stuff, Miscellany on 11 February 2008
· Comments (8)
Other stuff like this: call of duty, eric w hall, marine disappears
I don't doubt for a bit that the realistic imagery of modern video games might trigger symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder. Even though the war depicted in COD's is very unrealistic.
Not like this would be the first case of a former soldier going crazy after returning from an unnecessary and brutal war.
Sadly, this isn't all that rare.
My own cousin, only months after coming home, disappeared as well. He spent almost a year living in Moscow before he came back home.
Oh god. I hope he turns up okay.:(
As someone with that exact same name, I find this story very creepy whenever I read it.
Ugh... I hate hate HATE to be the one to say it but if pundits start blaming video games for this they're REALLY missing the point. Poor guy :( :( :(
Playing games like CoD, for me, really drive home the point of the futility of war. I've been in some pretty intensely stressful situations in my life, but nothing on the scale of multiple armed persons seeking to kill me. I can't begin to imagine the toll that would take, but could see how playing something like CoD after would create some very strong emotional responses.
We're all probably going to know someone with PTSD by the time this is over. I have a good friend who was talking to his buddy when a sniper shot the buddy in the head. To be having a conversation and then have him ripped away in mid-sentence right there was devastating and truly crippling.
One thing I think we can safely agree on is that returning vets are certainly in need of better psychological support when the need arises. On a side note, the Army had announced that active duty suicides are at the highest level ever, since they began keeping statistics in 1980.
This is another humbling reminder of the cost of war.