January isn’t always a good month for Vietnam veteran and author Greg Helle.

Helle, who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, remains haunted by memories from his past. And although one particular memory dates back to a January day during the Vietnam War, he says he re-experienced it as recently as a week and a half ago and the mental anguish was just as real.

“I just curled up in a corner in a fetal position,” he says. “I was just scared of the world. I realized 35 years ago, sometime in January, I cut someone’s throat.”

Helle will give a lecture, “Post- Traumatic Stress Disorder: The Hidden Cost of War,” at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Ames Public Library.

Post-traumatic stress disorder is brought about when a person experiences traumatic events, Helle says. Those who suffer from the disorder include not only war veterans, but also victims of rape, terrorism, domestic abuse or many other traumatic experiences.

Helle says the effects of the disorder are something he and many other war veterans, including the young men and women returning home from Iraq, live with everyday.

“That’s 35 years ago. What about the young ones?” he says. “I’m an old man. Look at the demons I’m still fighting. I don’t want these youngsters [in Iraq] to be like me.”

Due in part to his own struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder, Helle started the PTSD Alliance in 2003 to help victims cope and to raise awareness about the disorder.

“[Post-traumatic stress disorder is] what happens after all that happens,” he says. “It’s what happens to people when they get back into the community.”

Symptoms can include nightmares and flashbacks and can often result in depression and difficulty going on with daily life, Helle says.

“You take these emotions that everybody has … but it hits a person with PTSD all at one time,” he says.

Helle says he was able to “stuff” the effects of the disorder for 30 years after the war was over by keeping busy working long hours as an accountant, raising his family and focusing on religion. However, he had a “startle response” when a toy cannon went off at a flag ceremony when he was a Boy Scout leader in 1998.

“Boom! Everything was back,” he says. “Whatever I was using to cope was gone.”

He spent more than a year in hospitals and had to leave his job on disability. He has since written two books, “A Walk in Hell … The Other Side of War” and “The Enemy Within” chronicling his experiences.

Helle says one of the goals of the PTSD Alliance is to not just give information, but to connect real people with victims who they can talk to and can trust.

“I’m not a professional, but I know it from very close ends,” he says. “I live it everyday.”

Carla Hanson, vice president of divisions coordination for the PTSD Alliance and a survivor of post-traumatic stress disorder herself, says the organization’s strongest point is that it’s a group of survivors who volunteer their time and efforts to help victims.

“In order to make some sense of what happened to me, I had to do some sort of good,” she says.

Hanson says she joined the organization to be a contact for people who need help coping.

“These people can call us and they can talk to us without worrying about us breaking their confidence,” she says.

Helle says Veterans Affairs hospitals are overloaded with patients who suffer from the disorder — those who suffer from it have to go through a screening process that may take years before they can receive treatment.

“Help right now is what these people need,” Helle says.

Who: Greg Helle

Where: Ames Public Library Community Room

When: 7 p.m. Thursday

Cost: free