Undone: a Novella Using Othello to Discuss Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Support

Abstract

Amongst the discourse about Veterans, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has become a prevalent, if not dominant, theme. Often this discussion is accompanied by themes articulated in the phrase "Support Our Troops" and framed in the context of the military history and origins related to PTSD. But what often gets overlooked and overshadowed are the correlation between support and treatment or prevention of PTSD, the inadequacy of gestures framed as supporting our troops that do very little to actually support them, non-combat/ non-military PTSD, stigmas of PTSD that become an obstacle to getting treatment, and extreme portrayals of PTSD in fiction. Because of these factors, I wrote the novella "Undone" and used Shakespeare's Othello as a lens to examine these narratives.