"How PTSD Became a Problem Far Beyond the Battlefield"

Interesting point dda (cross-posted with nighswan btw) - but I am not convinced about the argument that the public were unaware of disabling and disfiguring wounds before TV. Some disabled veterans became beggars - and would be there in their old uniform, showing their wounds, telling people about their service and which battles they'd fought in. People knew. Maybe not as many as with TV, hard to count, but it was there.

See popular songs like
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_I_Hardly_Knew_Ye

Not about injuries as such, but Kipling wrote "The Last of the Light Brigade" to bring the plight of veterans to the public's attention.
http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_brigade.htm

It's always going to be difficult to compare PTSD today and in the past, and not just because that diagnosis is a recent one. Experiences that we see as abnormal and traumatic were taken for granted in past eras. For example, before the 20th century, most children would have seen siblings or friends die, and they would have understood their own lives as precarious from an early age. But possibly because these experiences were more common, they would have felt less isolated in their experiences.

Were Germans in a state of shock at the end of the Thirty Years War? It's hard to imagine that they weren't affected by all that bloodshed and rape, especially since many of them would have lived their whole lives in war's shadow. Did any of them suffer from what we would recognize as PTSD? I would imagine so, but that's speculation on my part.

It does not mean the condition has changed just because the name has changed.

Ambrosia - I really don't think that Autumnleaf is saying the condition has changed because the name has changed. AL is theorising that bad experiences used to be sadly far more common in every day life, the kind of bad experiences that these days are mostly experienced in the western world through war. So if isolation from mainstream experience is one factor in PTSD, then historically there would not be the isolation - because the bad experiences were more common and not limited to war zones. That's the theory.

NighSwan, the wars you use as example were fought over a number of years…but how many major battles? Most were skirmishes, engagements with hundreds of troops, a few thousands at most. There were long periods without any fighting. It does not compare with WW I or WW II…when you have continuous fighting going on (if not on one front, on the others). In terms of civilians… LOL In the wars you used to make your point a city will be sacked, hundreds, maybe thousands slaughtered. That’s nothing when compared to civilian loses at Leningrad, Stalingrad, the carpet bombing of Germany, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the dead and displaced in Korea, Vietnam…now in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan.
In the old days you might hear about a battle, months after. Now, you see live what’s going on. Big difference.

Makai_Lightning said:

My mother had suffered from PTSD at one point in time. She never specified why, exactly, but from what I do know of some of her life, that's absolutely true. And I can tell you I suffer(ed) PTSD, and the problem was chronic, and came about because of perpetual fear or chronic threat of violence.

All I'm gonna say about that is, reading in the article that rape victims tend to be easier to treat for PTSD than veterans, because they have an easier time categorizing the whole experience as a bad thing that needs to be dealt with versus the veterans who experience plenty of positive and growth experiences while at war, as well. I absolutely understand that sentiment; I think that's why both me and my mom had the issues we did. Not JUST because Something Bad happened, but because amongst the bad we keep searching for good. I think anyone who has an abusive family member kind of understands--I've certainly met enough people with experiences worse than mine who this applies to.

Tell so much of both how to help treat PTSD, but also how to help prevent it.

Click to expand...

I wonder about the PTSD that stems from child abuse, however? Most kids, even abused kids, love their parents, and even abusive parents can be loving in some contexts. And abuse is often sporadic or unpredictable in families. So I can see that the confusion of the good and bad elements of a very significant relationship leading to similar kinds of difficulties. Say your mom used to beat you and/or psychologically abuse you when she was drunk, or suffering from her own psychological issues, but she could also be clever, funny, loving etc. when she was in the right mood. I see this issue with a couple of my family members, actually (alcoholic mom was more psychologically abusive than physically in their cases, but that only made it more confusing, I think).

I've run across some folks who have developed some very sad defense mechanisms that allow them to compartmentalize the abuse they received from parents they loved (and who loved them too), including the self blame, such as "I was a rotten kid, so of course may dad had to thrash me with the belt," or even, "My parents beat me for my own good, and if they hadn't, I would have joined a gang or gotten into drugs, or gotten pregnant, or turned away from God..." or the ever present, "Kids these days are so horrible because their parents don't beat them," and that horrible, "Share this if you were spanked with a belt and came out okay," facebook meme.

dda27101 said:

NighSwan, the wars you use as example were fought over a number of years…but how many major battles? Most were skirmishes, engagements with hundreds of troops, a few thousands at most. There were long periods without any fighting. It does not compare with WW I or WW II…when you have continuous fighting going on (if not on one front, on the others). In terms of civilians… LOL In the wars you used to make your point a city will be sacked, hundreds, maybe thousands slaughtered. That’s nothing when compared to civilian loses at Leningrad, Stalingrad, the carpet bombing of Germany, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the dead and displaced in Korea, Vietnam…now in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan.
In the old days you might hear about a battle, months after. Now, you see live what’s going on. Big difference.

Click to expand...

I'm sorry but I think you are mistaken.

The Dutch War of Indepence was not "a few skirmiches involving at most a few thousand people", it was a really long and costly war that brought the Spanish kingdom to bankrucy, several times during the war.

The Thirty Years' War involved hundreds of thousands of troups from about twenty countries, and again, the death toll included as much as 40% of all Germans. Not just German soldiers, all Germans. Korea, Vietnam or even the atrocities of World War II do not even come close to such a proportion: the most devastated country of world war II, Poland, lost about 17% of its pre-war population. The Korean war killed about 9% of Korea's population. The Vietnam war killed no more than 7% of Vietnam's population (and that figure is probably too high). As for Syria today, even the highest estimates don't indicate a death toll over 1.3% of the population (even in absolute numbers, the Spanish Civil War killed more people than the Syrian Civil War... while lasting less than 3 years, whereas the Syrian Civil War is already its 4th year).

Likewise, the War of the Spanish succession involved hundreds of thousands of soldiers, implicated almost every major European power, and was fought both in Europe and in the Americas. It wasn't a "small war": France was effectively seeking to gain the Spanish throne, and thus get control of the entire Spanish empire, which at the time included not only the Latin American colonies, but also large swaths of what is now the US, the Philipines, and large parts of Italy and of the Netherlands. This was the first world war of the 18th century, except the stakes were actually much higher.


As for World War II, there were in fact periods without fighting: there was no fighting at all between september 39 and may 40 (8 months). The fighting then lasted less than two months and mostly ended in june 40. Then, appart from sporadic and largely ineffective air raids, there was again no fighting between june 40 and june 41 (a whole year).


I insist on using percentages because raw number don't mean much without context. Because otherwise the highest estimate for the death toll of the Taiping Rebellion in the mid 19th century is about 100 millions, higher than even the highest estimates for World War II. Except at the time China already had a population of 430 millions, so about 23%, which is quite high, but among what you expect for pre-20th century warfare; and again this is the the highest estimate, the lower (and most reasonable) estimate is 20 millions, ten times less... and still dwarfing the Korean war by one order of magnitude (but actually inferior to it if you consider the percentages).

autumnleaf said:

It's always going to be difficult to compare PTSD today and in the past, and not just because that diagnosis is a recent one. Experiences that we see as abnormal and traumatic were taken for granted in past eras. For example, before the 20th century, most children would have seen siblings or friends die, and they would have understood their own lives as precarious from an early age. But possibly because these experiences were more common, they would have felt less isolated in their experiences.

Click to expand...

That doesn't mean they weren't traumatized or that some of them didn't have symptoms that overlapped with what is called PTSD today. The percentages (and coping mechanisms) might have been different in a pre-industrial country, But that doesn't mean cases were absent. Indeed, there is evidence that people suffered from things that sound awfully like what we call PTSD today, even in antiquity (I linked some articles about this up thread). We mostly hear about it re soldiers, but that may be because the daily lives of the illiterate masses were far less likely to be recorded (by them or anyone else).

I think there's a very great desire on the part of many to assume that people were qualitatively different in the past, that the emotions we experience are different, but while culture can certainly change many things, I think the conditions encompassed by the modern diagnosis of PTSD is a physiological response that probably transcends time, place, and culture, though individual circumstances can certainly affect how it presents and its long-term prognosis.

Animals even appear to suffer from something similar.

Roxxsmom said:

The percentages (and coping mechanisms) might have been different in a pre-industrial country, But that doesn't mean cases were absent.

Click to expand...

Which is pretty much what I was trying to say, although obviously not as clearly as I'd planned. Historical people who underwent traumatic experiences probably did have something we'd recognize as PTSD, but the way they coped with it would be different.

I think there's a very great desire on the part of many to assume that people were qualitatively different in the past, that the emotions we experience are different, but while culture can certainly change many things, I think the conditions encompassed by the modern diagnosis of PTSD is a physiological response that probably transcends time, place, and culture, though individual circumstances can certainly affect how it presents and its long-term prognosis.

Click to expand...

Oh, I assume that human nature hasn't changed much over recent millenia and we experience the same emotional states as our ancestors did. But culture affects how we process those emotions.

The original article mentioned that isolation was a big factor in long-term PTSD. So if others around you share and understand your experience, that can alleviate it to a certain extent. If everyone you know has lost someone to war, it's a tragic situation all around but at least you can help each other through it. If you've gone through something that's less "normal" for your society, then your sense of isolation will increase and prolong your trauma.