Is the rate of PTSD higher in modern soldiers than in other eras?
The modern stereotype of soldiers is that all of them who saw combat have some form of mental trauma.
Did Grant or Sherman have trouble sleeping at night after the Civil War?
Did Henry V get flashbacks to the bloody corpses of Agincourt?
Did Ceaser hear the screams of barbarians in his head when anyone mention Gaul?
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>Is the rate of PTSD higher in modern soldiers than in other eras
Unsure. The primary sources indicate that PTSD was very much a thing according to psychohistorians.
>Did Grant or Sherman have trouble sleeping at night after the Civil War?
Grant for sure did. He had trouble sleeping at night DURING the Civil War.
>Did Henry V get flashbacks to the bloody corpses of Agincourt?
>Did Ceaser hear the screams of barbarians in his head when anyone mention Gaul?
Probably.
>Did Ceaser hear the screams of barbarians in his head when anyone mention Gaul?
No because "gaul" is a Germanic term, Caesar knew that land as Gallia. And no, "gaul" is not etymologically related to "gallia", the resemblance is purely coincidental.
>Did Grant or Sherman have trouble sleeping at night after the Civil War?
Sherman maybe, but Grant always slept like a baby after blacking out drunk.
>Did Henry V get flashbacks to the bloody corpses of Agincourt?
The guy got shot in the face with an arrow and had the point pulled out of his face bones with no anesthetic. The guy was metal as fuck. So probably not.
>Did Caesar hear the screams of barbarians in his head when anyone mentioned Gaul?
What the hell do you think he masturbated to?
Seriously though, I don't think that modern soldiers get PTSD at a higher instance than soldiers throughout history, it is just diagnosed at a higher instance now than ever before. Also, with the awareness of PTSD, the benefits one can get for having it, and the stigma against it having been destroyed, a lot more people are coming out of the woodwork who have it compared to previous wars.
They had problems with it in World War I, and a lot of that war was mind-shatteringly brutal and terrible beyond anything ever seen before or since.
When the ancient Israelites were slaughtering the Phoenician settlers of Palestine, the practice was that after slaughtering a bunch of them, the warriors wouldn't be allowed back into camp for a day and had to cleanse themselves. They would pray, cool down, relax, meditate, or whatever. It was their way of keeping these guys who were committing genocide from getting to a place where they could never come home mentally.
soldiers (ergo, peasants) were more desensitized to the act of killing and sight of blood, killing lambs and pigs anf watching guts and gore was an everyday thing
>or since
Objectively false. Stalingrad/Kursk and Iwo/Okinawa make the Marne look like fucking fairyland.
People in the past were not raised to hold the belief that all human life was valuable.
Is it true that veterans who've never seen active combat have been getting ptsd?
>Is the rate of PTSD higher in modern soldiers than in other eras?
Fuck no.
The only thing that's changed is the number of "soldiers" that try to benefit from claiming PTSD, and the number of people pretending to give a shit about soldiers with PTSD.
Iraq and A-stan didn't have shit on either world wars, or a lot of the earlier conflicts dudes were sent to deal with, as none of us faced sustained indirect fire for days, or the threat of enemy aircraft strafing/bombing the piss out of us.
>Is the rate of PTSD higher in modern soldiers than in other eras?
No we're just more aware of it now.
...
Look up SLUDGE syndrome and the acronym DUMBELLS. There would be nothing that could compare to seeing your best friend, who just couldn't get his shitty gas mask on fast enough, cry, piss, shit, and vomit all over himself while spasming into a slow and excruciatingly painful death.
Then, your entire platoon gets machine gunned because you were ordered to charge over open ground.
You can get PTSD from disturbing imagery or witnessing something unexpected.
In fact, the people with some of the highest rates of PTSD are the bomb crews that clear out landmines.
>the people with some of the highest rates of PTSD are the bomb crews that clear out landmines.
EOD guys must have autism, they get PTSD just from their robots blowing up
WILSON! WILSOOOON! I'M SORRY!
>Is the rate of PTSD higher in modern soldiers than in other eras?
It's possible, hardly conclusively proven, but possible. PTSD correlates most highly not with risk of death, but with the stress involved. Guys who get shelled for long lengths of time, regardless from casualties of said shelling. Bomb disposal. Point men on patrols. Modern soldiers tend to have much longer deployments and a much longer fighting schedule than their ancient counterparts, so it's certainly plausible.
Those towelheads have gone to far this time
First of all, gas attack wasn't anywhere near as common as modern perception makes it out to be.
>Then, your entire platoon gets machine gunned because you were ordered to charge over open ground.
Yeah, imagine that every fucking day for 3-6 months instead of a week or less.
My guess is the rate of PTSD among soldiers has remained the same, but now that it's has been granted legitimacy more people are willing to come forward. The attitude and emotions modern conflicts inspire are much different even if they're less brutal the media insures everything is examined. Decadent life styles buffer people from the harsh realities of conflict leaving them unequipped to manage the shock of war.
>This is actually a thing
washington.edu
Fuck would you know about every having a battle buddy?
Makes sense. Same as how K-9 guys get messed up if the dog gets it. A robot is a lot like a dog, these days.
We can never know, certainly it is diagnosed more due to progress in classifying and identifying the symptoms. There aren't many records of such a thing because it was general a taboo for numerous reason. That said I think yes, it is higher in modern soldiers, especially western soldiers. To fully explain why would take a thesis but to sum it up:
1. Prior to the information age people lived insular lives with little/no contact with outsiders, this made it easier to view the enemy as sub-human/inferior.
2. People generally grew up around more death in the past, both human and animal; nowadays the thought of killing anything larger than an insect is repulsive to many people.
3. Individual life is considered more valuable now and humans are all considered equal, thus killing is considered more of an immoral act.
4. The nature of modern conflict and news media make it harder to portray the conflict as a good vs evil struggle, thus again, harder to dehumanise the enemy. Furthermore the returning soldier no longer enjoys near-universal support and encouragement of his actions.
5. Modern transportation enables the soldier to get to battle more quickly, thus he can be sent into danger every day of a months-long deployment rather than spending 95% of his time marching to battle or waiting around for other forces to catch up.
6. In recent conflicts the soldier is under threat 24/7. Any moment on patrol he could step on an IED, any moment in base he could be hit by a rocket attack, any civilian or 'allied' local soldier could attack at any moment, therefore the soldier gets less time to relax.
7. Modern conflicts occur almost exclusively in populated areas and require the soldier to become wary of crowds etc., making it harder for the returning soldier to truly feel like he is away from the conflict.
So basically yes I expect the rate is higher because of a combination of factors experienced by the participant before, during and after the conflict.
It's hard to say. The study of PTSD is a really recent development.
There are plenty of stories all across the world of people having been changed by war in different ways but it's impossible to say which are legit cases of PTSD. You also have to take into consideration for most of human history, it was not something you talked about so who really knows.
Grant certainly had trouble and became a raging alcoholic for it.
I remember reading that one of the factors of modern-day PTSD is that soldiers are basically at full alert 99.99% of the time while deployed due to the fact that shit can hit the fan at any point no matter where you are, which means you are constantly on edge even when at home which results in little things triggering a combat response. But I'm a shit eating civilian so take that w/ a grain of salt
you could still have your best friend killed or something
Grants alcoholism was not a product of the war, it existed before 1861
Ancient men did not make best friends with easily killed people.
Who cares. Militaries are the most overrated men, hyped only because they know they are cuckolds.
And what of the women who join?
woah man cutting edge opinion
Probably not quite as high. New research is suggesting that PTSD could have physical origins. This would explain why so many NFL athletes have symptoms very much resembling PTSD
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>Is the rate of PTSD higher in modern soldiers than in other eras?
>Fuck no.
>The only thing that's changed is the number of "soldiers" that try to benefit from claiming PTSD, and the number of people pretending to give a shit about soldiers with PTSD.
So is this your opinion or evidence based?
Good argument
>Did Grant or Sherman have trouble sleeping at night after the Civil War?
>Did Henry V get flashbacks to the bloody corpses of Agincourt?
No
The people who actually fought in their wars while they watched might have had some though
There was very little conception of PTSD prior to the past century
However you do find descriptions of soldiers clearly traumatized as far back as Ancient Greece
It also wasn't as socially accepted - warriors were supposed to revel in the fight
I think it has to do with the development of psychology, changing attitudes about war, and mass-destructive nature of industrialized warfare - in that sense, WWI was a watershed
They can also be in a war zone on Friday and be walking down the street in their hometown on Sunday. In previous wars, soldiers at least had a few weeks or months as they marched or sailed back home to talk to their comrades about what happened and to get used to not being at war anymore, rather than almost instantly switched from one to the other.
This thread has been an interesting read. I wonder if the ISIS fucks that decapitate people in front of a camera are emotionally drained. Probably that they consider non-sunnis as non-human and therefore they can bear their sins with no remorse.
Lindybeige made a very good video about it
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Sort of surprised that nobody in this thread has asked the most important question:
Is PTSD even real?
>is this your opinion or evidence based?
Both.
PTSD occurs as a result of the classical conditioning that takes place in combat, and the emotional impact traumatic events can have on people.
Soldiers become conditioned to react to certain stimuli in combat to avoid getting shot or blown the hell up, and this conditioning has an unconscious effect on their nervous system. Just as Pavlov's dogs had no control over their saliva output when their dinner bell was rung, soldiers conditioned to combat stimuli have no control over their accelerated heart rate and adrenaline spikes when exposed to combat stimuli, or similar stimuli not in combat. This conditioning usually becomes extinct after time away from the combat stimuli, and it can also be reconditioned. This is the easiest aspect of PTSD to deal with.
The emotional impact, however, tends to be more complicated, but is no different than dealing with any other kind of emotional trauma experienced by people from all walks of life.
wait really?
This. Also, military benefits are far better now than in the past, so soldiers expect help, whereas in the past soldiers would just have to suck it the fuck up and keep their problems to themselves.
Suicide is especially common when people leave the military. In my experience, I think it's the loss of the tight knit camaraderie with guys that have been through the same shit as you combined with the culture shock of suddenly being all on your own as an adult civilian, which for many who joined right out of high school is an unfamiliar and unnerving situation. The military pretty much completely takes care of you, then you EAS and everything is on you. I'm not sure PTSD is a 100% accurate term for this, but it's similar.