- “He’s one of 103,200, or 228,875, or 336,000 Americans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan and came back with PTSD, depending on whom you ask, and one of 115,000 to 456,000 with traumatic brain injury.”
This is a factual claim, as the author uses direct evidence to show who they are talking about with a statistic to explain their past. While not every Iraq or Afghanistan War Veteran has PTSD, the man we are talking about does. He also is one with a traumatic brain injury.
2. “Brannan Vines has never been to war. But she’s got a warrior’s skills: hyperawareness, hypervigilance, adrenaline-sharp quick-scanning for danger, for triggers.”
This is a categorical claim to start off the article. While the person the article is mentioning here doesn’t have PTSD herself, the article uses a categorical claim to explain how she developed PTSD like symptoms. It also explains every symptom of a person who suffers from PTSD in the article, such as hyper awareness, and quick reflexes.
3. “Different studies of the children of American World War II, Korea, and Vietnam vets with PTSD have turned up different results: “45 percent” of kids in one small study “reported significant PTSD signs”; “83 percent reported elevated hostility scores.”
This, once again, is a factual as it uses actual statistics to prove what was previously stated. The example here would be that 45% of those who were children to WW2 or Korean War vets showed signs of PTSD while 83% showed signs of hostility.
4. “We await the results of the 20-year, 10,000-family-strong study of impacts on Iraq and Afghanistan veterans’ kin, the largest of its kind ever conducted, that just got under way.”
This is a numerical claim, as it claims a number of how many families have provided help for the research into war families with PTSD. The article claims around 10,000 families have helped create better research on the topic of PTSD.
5. “That was the impetus for the Marriage and Family Therapy Program, which since 2005 has added 70 therapists to military installations around the country.”
Another factual and numerical claim, as it gives a number to how many therapists have been added to the military since 2005. The claim states over 70 have been added since 2005.
6. “She sleeps a maximum of five hours a night, keeps herself going with fast food and energy drinks, gets Katie to and from school and to tap dance and art, where Katie produces some startlingly impressive canvases, bright swirling shapes bisected by and intersected with other swaths of color, bold, intricate.”
This is both a categorical claim and a factual claim as it states a fact on the sleep schedule of who the article is talking about, and states the certain qualities of her current life style. It is a fact that this is currently how this person’s life is going, and it is categorical, stating that she basically lives off fast food, energy drinks, and no sleep.
1 hour
Counterintuitive 