BoingBoing reader Sarah says,
In the vein of inappropriate/unexpected graphic adaptations of literature… my father, a psychiatrist with the Veterans Administration, alerted me to a new training video on the VA website that describes post-deployment health evaluation procedure… as an adaptation of GILGAMESH. What genius government employee came up with that one, eh?
There are some odd (though not necessarily helpful) synchronicities: Gilgamesh was the King of Uruk (now in Iraq). In the vid, his friend comes home from battle with Gulf War Syndrome (I'm guessing), and he with PTSD.
Link to the DoD/VA website.
reader comment: someone whose name I accidentally deleted says,
Using Gilgamesh in a cartoon to explain
"Post-Deployment Health Evaluations" sounds like a
bizarre combination, but they're following a meme
started by VA psychiatrist Jonathan Shay. His books
include "Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the
Undoing of Character" and "Odysseus in America: Combat
Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming". Link