Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

One of the darker sides of war. PTSD is not new, there are written accounts of similar symptoms that go back to ancient times, and there is clear documentation in the historical medical literature starting with the Civil War, when a PTSD-like disorder was known as “Da Costa’s Syndrome.” There are particularly good descriptions of posttraumatic stress symptoms in the medical literature on combat veterans of World War II and on Holocaust survivors.

Once called “shell shock” or “Battle fatigue”, PTSD is best known for how it changes war veterans returning home from the battlefield. Although PTSD is often associated with Vietnam veterans, it appears in veterans of all wars and eras all the way back to Babylon (circa 1780 B.C.) where Hammurabi described the lost warriors, warriors who returned home from battle but left their souls on the battlefield. It is interesting that Hammurabi’s description of the symptoms form the basis of today’s clinical diagnostic protocols for PTSD.

Careful research and documentation of PTSD began in earnest after the Vietnam War. The National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study estimated in 1988 that the prevalence of PTSD in that group was 15.2% at that time and that 30% had experienced the disorder at some point since returning home.

PTSD has subsequently been observed in all veteran populations that have been studied, including World War II, Korean conflict, and Persian Gulf populations, and in United Nations peacekeeping forces deployed to other war zones around the world. There are remarkably similar findings of PTSD in military veterans in other countries. For example, Australian Vietnam veterans experience many of the same symptoms that American Vietnam veterans experience.