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WKEF-TV ABC 22 News :: News - Top Stories - Vet Who Hits Wife in Sleep Waits Decades to Get Help for PTSD
Friday, November 16 2012, 12:27 AM EST
Vet Who Hits Wife in Sleep Waits Decades to Get Help for PTSD
DAYTON -- Bill Mayes violently beats anything around him during his sleep including his wife, but doesn't remember a thing when he wakes up.

"He gets pretty violent at night, and I have woke up with him beating me on my chest," said his wife Elaine.

"I've woken up before punching her in the chest and face so naturally we stopped sleeping together," said Bill. "Now I beat on chairs and furniture and stuff."

Married for 44 years, Bill and Elaine Mays now sleep separately so Bill's nightmares from the Vietnam War don't scar his wife.

"It took them 30 years to get them to notice I had something wrong," said Bill. "They wouldn't talk to me at all." "They'd just write it off that he was having a nightmare," Elaine added.

Billl and Elaine tried talking with different doctors for years to figure out what was wrong, but it wasn't until two years ago when they came to the VA Medical Center where they finally got the help that they needed.

"Dreams are trying to make heal portions of your life that are not solved yet," said William Wall from the VA Medical Center who watched Bill and Elaine's story with reporter Wale Aliyu.

"How can a person go 30 plus years looking for help and not get it," Aliyu asked.

"The number of providers that know of this versus the larger number that don't know of this shows a person can see somebody for that long and not have this properly diagnosed," said Wall.

He says the once medically unexplained condition of PTSD is more widely distributed in the medical community plus things have changed since the Vietnam War.

"The message was if you have symptoms there's something wrong with you," said Wall. "That was very misunderstood, that put the burden of responsibility on the Vietnam veteran."

Wall says 15-20 percent of P.T.S.D. patients who have bad dreams will start hitting and punching in their sleep and five percent of those people, like Bill will wake up and not remember it.

"I feel so bad because I don't know what he's thinking," said Elaine. "I know he's fighting somebody but I don't know why. And I feel bad because he doesn't remember it the next morning."

Bill says his medication and time in therapy is helping, but he knows it will take some time.   

Here are the four symptoms doctors now use to identify someone with P.T.S.D.
    1. You have a traumatic event,
    2. You constantly re-experience that event
    3. You avoid any reminders of the event
    4. You have some sort of hyper-arousal with any thought of the event.

See Previous Story: Veteran Speaks Out About Living With PTSD

Connect with ABC 22/FOX 45 Reporter Wale Aliyu on Facebook and Twitter.
Vet Who Hits Wife in Sleep Waits Decades to Get Help for PTSD

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