After being lionized by many as the human face of the U.S. effort to rebuild a troubled Iraq, Dwyer brought the battlefield home with him, often grappling violently with delusions he was being hunted by Iraqi killers.
His internal terror got so bad that, in 2005, the Long Island native shot up his El Paso, Texas, apartment and held police at bay for three hours with a 9mm handgun, believing Iraqis were trying to get in.
On June 28, police in Pinehurst, N.C., who responded to Dwyer's home, said the 31-year-old collapsed and died after abusing a computer cleaner aerosol. Dwyer had moved to North Carolina after living in Texas.
Maureen Dwyer, who broke into sobs as she spoke about her son, said she agreed to be interviewed despite her grief because she said she hoped to bring attention to the disorder."Every second that goes by, there is another soldier just like Joseph," Maureen Dwyer said. "Another family can't go through this. All the politicians talk so great about the soldiers, about patriotism, but mental illness is something they are not putting enough into."
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*"He loved the picture, don't get me wrong, but he just couldn't get over the war," his mother, Maureen Dwyer, said by telephone from her home in Sunset Beach, N.C. "He wasn't Joseph anymore. Joseph never came home."
"Every second that goes by, there is another soldier just like Joseph," Maureen Dwyer said. "Another family can't go through this. All the politicians talk so great about the soldiers, about patriotism, but mental illness is something they are not putting enough into."