Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) – combat stress, shell shock, battle fatigue or any of the other labels used to refer to PTSD – is one of the most-debilitating albeit least understood emotional disorders suffered by those living in the wake of experienced trauma. The military services, military medical practitioners, and a number of military veterans groups have only just begun to appreciate the risk of PTSD to combat veterans. But it’s still only a surface understanding. The symptoms are varied. Rarely is there any preemptive training to mitigate the symptoms of PTSD. The public is becoming increasingly aware of PTSD, but if a non-sufferer is not impacted by it, PTSD becomes something of an “out of sight, out of mind” non-issue. Richland County (S.C.) Sheriff Leon Lott is striving to change that dynamic within his Richland County Sheriff’s Dept. (RCSD), a force of some 700 deputies including patrol officers and those involved in counter-gang and drug-interdiction operations in the county encompassing the state’s capitol city, Columbia.

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