On April 16, 2007, a student at Virginia Tech University india viagra generic safe killed 32 people and injured 18 in the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.
That tragic event formed the backdrop for a three-day “Prisoner of Her Past” residency at the Blacksburg, Va., campus, where I showed the film and discussed its implications in classes and public gatherings.
Dr. Stefanie Hofer – a German language professor who lost her husband, Jamie Bishop, in the shootings – had discovered the “Prisoner” film and book as she researched PTSD in the aftermath of April 16. She told me that she believed the story of my mother, whose Holocaust-era traumas have returned in the form of delusion, would be of value to a Virginia Tech community that had suffered terrible events much more recently.
Only those who attended “Prisoner” residency could assess its impact, but there was no doubting the level of interest in the central theme of the acquistare cialis story: late-onset PTSD. I was welcomed to speak to hundreds of freshmen in the First Year Experience course and to classes in Russian conversation, the Holocaust, modern German culture and 20th century history. A heavily attended book reading at the university’s Newman Library and a crowded film screening in the historic Lyric Theater opened up the narrative to the public at large.
Every session, including one-on-one meetings with specific faculty members, culminated with an avalanche of questions, most centering on PTSD: “Does the illness travel through generations?” (Research suggests it can.) “Can people with PTSD be helped?” (Yes, though my mother’s extreme case resists all treatment.) “Does talking about trauma offer relief or healing?” (Not necessarily.) “Does the world know about generic cialis online late-onset PTSD?” (Not nearly enough, as the early misdiagnosis of my mother’s case shows.)
But a great deal of the teaching here was done by the students. One told
the First Year Experience class of her visit to the Dachau concentration camp, her harrowing description of what she saw bringing a large lecture hall to awed silence. Several ROTC students and others spoke of friends and relatives who had returned from combat in Afghanistan psychologically imperiled. Other students discussed the lack of recognition the Holocaust receives through much of Eastern Europe. One told me of how difficult it is even for the grandchildren of survivors in Israel to speak of this subject. And many said that when they watched my mother in “Prisoner” they recognized similar, paranoid behaviors of their own grandparents.
In effect, these appearances at Virginia Tech linked a historic trauma to a very recent one and showed how much has yet to be understood about the implications of both.
— Howard Reich