BUTLER TWP — Psychologist Roger Brooke recalled talking to a veteran who came to his clinic claiming he actually died in Afghanistan and he continued to exist as a ghost.

Clinically, the veteran’s condition would be called post traumatic stress disorder, PTSD. However, Brooke said looking at the condition as strictly psychological is not entirely helpful.

“What I want to do today is to reframe what we call post traumatic stress disorder or post traumatic stress injury ... as a human universal,” said Brooke, the director of military psychological services at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh.

Brooke was the keynote speaker at VA Butler Healthcare’s Mental Health Summit on Wednesday. He spoke to about 100 people in the VA auditorium.

He said the psychological wounds of war originally were viewed as a universal pain that was understood by all warrior cultures. He said such a reframing would offer more dignity and direction to afflicted veterans.

Brooke said the “wounds of war” were described by author Homer more than 2,500 years ago in the stories of Achilles and Odysseus, whose moral characters were destroyed by war. He said these also are the stories of many men and women who have been hurt by wars.

“It is not a story that belongs to classics studies,” Brooke said.

He said the Xhosa of South Africa call the condition “kanene,” meaning “it follows you like a shadow.” The Zulus of Africa call is “ukuhlanya,” which is derived from a word meaning to wander without direction.

The Lakota Sioux described someone with it by saying “the spirit has left him.” During the American Civil War, it was called “soldier’s heart.”

However, Brooke said American society today frames the condition as a psychiatric illness, which burdens the veteran with personal shame and can cause other people to view the person as a criminal.

He said there are a few themes to consider when looking at this condition.

One is the theme of military service as a moral contract. Brooke said the warrior knows what he is fighting to preserve, but without community support, his sacrifice loses meaning.

Another theme is self-sacrifice and service by leaving civilian life to go into military life.

“You behave in a way that is not like you anymore; you’re just totally immersed,” Brooke said.

He noted military values such as duty and courage also are spiritual values. He said combat experience is almost a spiritual mix of terror and awe.

After wars are over, people who have had this experience are considered veterans, but also are expected to jump back into being a civilian again.

“It really violates the dignity of military experience,” Brooke said.

He said the soldier’s confrontation with evil is a key element, saying soldiers are placed in a situation where anything could happen to them and they can do almost anything.

“The moral core of the trauma is why so many veterans said they have lost their souls,” Brooke said.

Brooke recalled working with an Army Ranger who was weeping over a dead enemy from the Middle East. The Ranger, who was a Christian, decided to pray for the dead enemy to go to Allah, the Muslim deity. The Ranger’s sense of relief was great.

He said the spiritual element to all of this is important. When hosting a retreat with veterans, Brooke found a large rock and asked some of the veterans to place memorabilia on it. One veteran put a bullet on the rock, and Brooke noted that it represented a way to put past violence in a spiritual place, as a way to dignify it or forgive it.