Thoughts on the prevalence of PTSD and what it may say about human nature?

[Cabal]

I'm certainly no expert when it comes to PTSD, but from what I understand it is rather common, particularly for soldiers who have seen combat, been stationed in a combat zone, and/or been deployed for up to or over 12 months at a time.

What I'm wondering is what its prevalence in this context might mean as far as its relationship to what is broadly referred to as human nature (which, personally, I'm convinced is actually quite narrow in scope). For instance, many would say it is in our nature to be violent, or even to war. Those who might assert this tend to refer to the history of war and violence throughout human existence. But does the prevalence of PTSD perhaps offer a rebuttal of sorts to this assertion? Obviously, there are other arguments that might be made against such an assertion, but I'm more interested in what the topic of PTSD might have to offer this discussion.

[tod evans]

There'd be a whole lot less PTSD if tax dollars weren't being spent on it...

Then there's the "Just-Us" system and those who use PTSD as a defense for everything from weed to murder..

And the MSM reporting on the evil vets or the poor vets..

What about the Dr.'s who are afraid of getting sued for not properly diagnosing or medicating the possible PTSD sufferer who might go off his rocker...

[youngbuck]

You pose an interesting question. I can't really offer any insight, but I wouldn't mind seeing what others think. A related question that I've pondered is how PTSD has affected warriors of the past, for example centuries or millennia ago. Are there historical records of returning soldiers having PTSD? Or perhaps they were never mentioned due to it being culturally unacceptable...

[tod evans]

You pose an interesting question. I can't really offer any insight, but I wouldn't mind seeing what others think. A related question that I've pondered is how PTSD has affected warriors of the past, for example centuries or millennia ago. Are there historical records of returning soldiers having PTSD? Or perhaps they were never mentioned due to it being culturally unacceptable...

I'm a Nam era vet who worked in a Navy hospital, of the few hundred patients that went through the psych ward during my hitch I only remember one who was genuinely $#@!ed in the head. He was a swamp rat that liked acid and between the duty and the dope he was a mess.

Most of the patients were there for depression after loosing body parts or their family.

Then again I don't recall hearing about a "PTSD" diagnosis during my enlistment....

[VIDEODROME]

It seems from anecdotal stories I hear that the worst PTSD comes from witnessing or participating in Collateral Damage. I'm not sure how affected people are by killing the actual members of Al Quada.

It's also interesting to see how this applies to Drone pilots.

[Cabal]

You pose an interesting question. I can't really offer any insight, but I wouldn't mind seeing what others think. A related question that I've pondered is how PTSD has affected warriors of the past, for example centuries or millennia ago. Are there historical records of returning soldiers having PTSD? Or perhaps they were never mentioned due to it being culturally unacceptable...

That would be interesting to know, and it is something I've thought about as well. From what I gather, ancient warriors probably also suffered from the condition, but it simply wasn't recognized as the PTSD we're familiar with today.

Here are a few resources with some of PTSD's history, but PTSD has a distinct condition seems to be a relatively recent designation in medical sciences.

https://historyofptsd.wordpress.com/timeline-2/

http://www.brainline.org/content/201...e_pageall.html

http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/PTS...f_the_disorder

Anxiety through the ages

The modern understanding of PTSD dates from the 1970s, largely as a result of the problems that were still being experienced by US military veterans of the war in Vietnam.

One of the first descriptions of PTSD was made by the Greek historian Herodotus. In 490 BCE he described, during the Battle of Marathon, an Athenian soldier who suffered no injury but became blind after witnessing the death of a fellow soldier.

Victorian doctors had no name for it but recognised the symptoms in survivors of rail crashes. In the US, it was called "Railway Spine" but the rail companies refused to pay compensation, regarding the claims as fraudulent hoaxes. With the progression of psychiatry in the military context of World War One, the condition became known as "shell shock".

http://www.scotsman.com/news/shock-tactics-1-1354834

Datis, the Persian satrap, came to Marathon, a plain of Attica, with an army of three hundred thousand, encamped there, and declared war on the inhabitants of the country. The Athenians, however, contemning the barbarian host, sent out nine thousand men, and appointed as generals Cynegeirus, Polyzelus, Callimachus, and Miltiades. When this force had engaged the enemy, Polyzelus, having seen a supernatural vision, lost his sight, and became blind.

http://www.theoi.com/Text/PlutarchParallelStories.html

[timosman]

[Ronin Truth]

PTSD

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...25.MSp8c_P6ixY

[timosman]

PTSD

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...25.MSp8c_P6ixY

Dude, do not include all the tracking crap in the url. Looks like you are using Firefox on an HP laptop. Here is the clean link - https://www.google.com/search?q=PTSD

[Zippyjuan]

You pose an interesting question. I can't really offer any insight, but I wouldn't mind seeing what others think. A related question that I've pondered is how PTSD has affected warriors of the past, for example centuries or millennia ago. Are there historical records of returning soldiers having PTSD? Or perhaps they were never mentioned due to it being culturally unacceptable...

They used to call it things like "shell shock".

[osan]

I'm certainly no expert when it comes to PTSD, but from what I understand it is rather common, particularly for soldiers who have seen combat, been stationed in a combat zone, and/or been deployed for up to or over 12 months at a time.

What we call PTSD was once called "shell shock" and "battle fatigue", depending upon which era you consider. It is very real and became prevalent with the mechanization of warfare, which more or less began during the American war of northern aggression in 1860.

What I'm wondering is what its prevalence in this context might mean as far as its relationship to what is broadly referred to as human nature (which, personally, I'm convinced is actually quite narrow in scope). For instance, many would say it is in our nature to be violent, or even to war.

Many talk through their $#@!s. Human nature cannot be taken in vacuo. So far as I can tell, human nature manifests based largely on the context in which life is being lived. The written studies of aboriginal tribal peoples tend to show a great propensity toward peace and... <drumroll>... FREEDOM!!!! Imagine that, anarchy is a peaceful affair most of the time. So far as I can observe, violence of the sort to which you refer here does not arise until Empire comes into the equation. This appears to be the universal case, though I cannot claim exhaustive knowledge.

Those who might assert this tend to refer to the history of war and violence throughout human existence.

Yes, and it is the simplistic view IMO. Whether a soldier or warrior experiences PTSD probably has much to do with his basic orientation to the world.

For example, my shihan was John Denora, a very gifted martial artist and in many ways something of a mystery. In the early 1950s he was a young Marine Lt. in Korea and had seen a lot of combat action. One day in Seoul during the notoriously hot and humid Korean summers, he'd boarded a train to return to his unit after a few day's liberty. There was, of course, no air conditioning in those cars and so he'd opened the windows. As the train began to move, a small Korean boy jumped up and hung on to the open window while attempting to remove sensei's watch from his wrist. He became annoyed with the child, took his .45 and cracked him on the head. The child fell under the wheels and was killed. Sensei's response was further annoyance at being detained such that he would be late getting back to his unit.

Years later, stationed in Japan, the chickens came home to roost, so to speak, for a man of Roman Catholic upbringing from Passaic NJ and his sense of guilt at having killed the child overcame him and he decided to commit seppuku (Japanese ritual suicide where one slices his own belly open in atonement for an unforgivable transgression against honor). To make a long story short, his sensei talked him out of it and he went on to teach me. The point being that sensei had trained to be a samurai since his teen years, but his Catholic upbringing was more fundamental than his bushido training and when the rubber hit the road, he responded not as a bushi, but as a Catholic and was therefore riddled with remorse and guilt. A true bushi would have likely felt no such emotions because he would not have seen the situation as had Denora. Rather, a true samurai would have looked at the resulting death as the expected consequence of one's attempt at stealing from another. Karma collected its due, in other words. Denora, regardless of his extensive training, could not do it because of the earlier inculcation of the Christian ethic, which drove him to see the child as the victim, rather than aggressor.

So to finally come to an answer, I feel strongly that one's early upbringing greatly effects outcomes in such circumstances as war. If you do not see all the killing as basically evil, then you are perhaps less likely to develop the sorts of reaction formations that we call "PTSD". But if you are of solid Judeo-Christian ethics, you will respond accordingly, and apparently that response is often PTSD. You live possibly for years on end in a state of very real and immediate threat against your very ability to breathe. That has got to be terribly stressful. Warfare is now mechanized and the technologies so cleverly and viciously efficient that I can well imagine how one might find themselves deeply affected by it. In days of yore, brave men with strong arms and keen reflex battled it out one on one with swords, pikes and similar means. You largely knew where death lay. Today, death does not only face you, but surrounds you and may come to visit in all manner of random ways, often in the form of shrapnel, fire, and organ-ripping shock waves. I have long felt that the random nature of modern warfare must contribute to this very significantly. It is one thing to face a monster with a sword. It is quite another to hide behind what you hope is an effective shield, all the while knowing that a stray object traveling at high velocity could come out of nowhere and kill or brutally maim you at any time. The sense of having no reasonable control over one's own fate must be terribly oppressive, especially after protracted periods.

But does the prevalence of PTSD perhaps offer a rebuttal of sorts to this assertion?

Certainly in certain contexts. Personally, I think people like to live, all else equal. That alone is reason enough to choose peace over war. I believe that there are many other reasons as well, most of which make deep-seated good sense. But ANYTHING can be perverted and I do believe that Empire has been the perverting factor in human behavior ever since it was vomited forth upon the earth all those millennia ago by devils that bore the appearance of men.

I think, once again all else equal, that the average man will endeavor to maintain a state of peaceful coexistence unless spurred on to something else by external influences, organic or synthetic.

[euphemia]

My father was in the South Pacific in WWII with the Japanese patroling all around. He was in Korea and did two tours in Vietnam that I remember. I lived in a military community most of my childhood. We are not far from Tullahoma and Ft. Campbell. We see a lot of military and former military here. We had nothing close to the kind of support available to military families today.

I think PTSD is a real thing. PTSD is just the current label. I think a lot of men came home from war and acted out in different ways. Some became workaholics, alcoholics, drug addicts, or some other thing. Some withdrew. Some were depressed. Some took off in the car or took their lives.

What I see today in the faces of our military is worse than anything I saw on my dad's military friends. I have a feeling today's military is a different thing than what my dad experienced back in the day. The death tolls in previous wars were much higher than we've experienced in the Middle East, but I see more broken down people returning. I can't imagine what our personnel see today is worse than being a POW in Europe or Japan during WWII, or in Vietnam.

I don't know. It seems like people have a harder time these days.

In any case, here's a hug for our {{{RPF military}}} folks.

[VIDEODROME]

Maybe it's the constant threat of IEDs or being ordered to work with people you expect to betray you or kill you with the guns you've just given them.

Or maybe on top of this is feeling betrayed by Washington back home as well.

Or people who can't find work at home and go back in for many consecutive tours without a break.

Otherwise, again I can guess some of it is seeing so many dead innocent casualties on top of dead fighters on either side. Especially if they see the dead that resulted from our own drone strikes like that hospital that was bombed.

[pcosmar]

Then again I don't recall hearing about a "PTSD" diagnosis during my enlistment....

It wasn't invented yet.

[Bern]

Some good info posted here: http://www.coping-with-epilepsy.com/...ored-body-520/