The Effects Of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Through The Ages

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The Effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
In Soldiers through the Ages.

Through the history of humanity we have waged war on each other. These wars have been fought in the names of religion, governments, personal vendettas and just plain foolishness. But there has always been one terrible side effect of war that was largely ignored or falsely interpreted and that is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or Shell Shock. The actual name of the disorder has gone through many changes as time has progressed, due to different theories on how it occurred and how it affected certain people. These names include; Exhaustion , Railway Hysteria , Soldier’s Heart , Shell Shock and Combat Fatigue . Although the names have changed, the overall definition of this disorder has not. In the “PTSD Manual”, a manual used by the military more or less as a handbook in the field for commanders and medics, it defines PTSD as; “A psychological condition experienced by a person who had faced a traumatic event which caused a catastrophic stressor outside the ranges of usual human experience (an event such as war, torture, rape, or natural disaster)” (Mil Vet PTSD Manual).
PTSD was first officially recognized by the government in the early 1800 when it called “exhaustion”. They realized that soldiers had been showing extreme signs of stress after battles in the War of 1812. But this puzzled doctors because soldiers back then were not supposed to show signs of stress of fear in battle, because of the patriotism they were supposed to feel for their country. However, as we know today they were suffering terribly due to lack of treatment. In 1876 Dr. Mendez DaCosta published a paper on Civil War combat vets diagnosing “Soldier’s Heart”, showing that the usual symptoms were extreme startle responses, hyper-vigilance and heart arrhythmias.
During the 1900’s WWI was in full swing and thousands of soldiers were coming home strick...