What's the deal with modern PTSD? Has it always existed? Has the cuckification of modern society played a role?

>It seems like most soldiers until Vietnam dealt with war fairly well

Idiot.

It has always existed, because war has always been a traumatic event. People already provided you with some examples. Another might be Achilles becoming severly depressed at the gates of Troy.

Obviously people paid a lot less attention to psychology in earlier times, that's a given.
But pre-modern societies also had coping mechanisms. War was often ritualized so it wasn't always the case of living in a constant fear of ambush for 3 years in enemy territory. Often you just had to stand in a field and push with a pike for one agreed upon day until sun went down. There were religious ceremonies meant to help contextualize the fighting, to provide a clear line between war and day-to-day life, with sacrifices, festivals and purification of "blood taint" afterwards.

You might want to read up on some ancient authors like Herodotus or Thucidydes for all the ritualism and custom surrounding warfare.

fucking this

It's just that the symptoms changed as society changed
Marshal Ney had PTSD after the Russian campaign, but instead of trembling and crying, his symptoms were suicidal behavior on the battlefield

There are a lot of storys of people in history with weird querks and extreme stress that probably are just seen as character flaws that are actually ptsd.

He was pretty badass.
>During the battle, he had five horses killed under him; and at the end of the day, Ney led one of the last infantry charges, shouting to his men: "Come and see how a marshal of France meets his death!".

Personally I have PTSD from Iraq and Afghanistan, regarding war it has and always will be there. But it also exists for people that have been in car accidents, sexually assaulted, or the numerous other experiences that have a profound impact. Real PTSD is no joking matter, but it also, oddly enough, a way for those of us that have been in war to keep hold of the experience. When you are there you want nothing more than get the fuck out, when you are out you want nothing more than to go back. The worse is when you begin to slowly forget things, or events, like the sound of brother's voice or laugh that is no longer here and then the guilt of surviving kicks in.

Was it as bad as today though? The Greeks glorified war and glorified personal accomplishments on the battlefield.

I would think worse due to lack of understanding. I mean the individual themselves. Trying understand what the fuck is going on and not being able too, had to make it worse in some ways. Plus some individuals I'm sure were branded as cowards when in fact they weren't.

It's literally as old as rome, now fuck off.

This. Also

>It seems like most soldiers until Vietnam dealt with war fairly well.
Has OP known any Vietnam Vets, seen any homeless people, or been exposed to any pop culture dealing with Vietnam vets? It's a gigantic cliche that lots of people came back with serious issues, and a running joke in media during the 80s and 90s was that homeless people were all Vietnam vets. If anything, they're the one group of vets that's stereotyped heavily as all having PTSD.

Do former Viet Cong also have PTSD in large numbers or is it just the American troops that are weak-minded pussies?

Fuck off

>It seems like most soldiers until Vietnam dealt with war fairly well.
Are you completely unfamiliar with the Vietnam flashback meme?????

Or even just the Rambo film series.

Answer the question please.

>It seems like most soldiers until Vietnam dealt with war fairly well. They hardly talked about it, came back and seemed to live somewhat normal lives, raised families etc.
But that's wrong, you fucking moron.

No kidding, shell shock anyone?

youtube.com/watch?v=YPJW3A-e6jo

I know I'll get crucified for posting this, but he actually explores and explains the entire concept pretty well

youtube.com/watch?v=FDNyU1TQUXg

It has always existed, but the intense noise and prolonged length of modern combat makes it easier to catch.

Its always been there, but modern combat is different, why, the tour of duty as you said, im no expert but it takes very little time to go feoma state of war to getting on a plane and being a civikian next week,back in the days solsiers had more time to decompress till they camehome, and most of the rimes they spent that ti e with other soldiers who went throug it, as i see it a major problem is friends and family back home who just dont u derstand what you went through, most ex soldiers, at least shorrly after coming home prefer the company of other vets, anothr thing might be how we inthe est are far detached from war, the most stressful thing for some is a job interview, you can go your entire life not giving war a second thought, but in older days, especially antiquity war was common, hoplites were civilians who would fight in the summer almost regularly,so the stress of war and fighting was a common fear so to speak, its like cold showers i guess, not to downplay thw seriousness tho, if you take coldish showers daily, with theoccasional ice cold one it would be less shocking than throwing a man who takes really hot showers in an ice cold bath. No expert though dont crucify me, im a civve obviously, these are my 2 cents anywya.

On my phone sorry for the disgusting spelling.

>intense noise
Tell that to those who fired cannons

>prolonged length
Tell that to Napoleonic troops that invaded Russia

US troops in the Middle East have princess-tier living conditions compared to soldiers of the past centuries

>Life as a soldier isn't total shit anymore
>Fighting on the other hand may have >become way worse
Sounds like that only worsens the experience.

I'd like to add, while pre-modern warfare was horrific the bodies tended to still be recognizable as human. A stabbed corpse or a person whos been blown into a bunch of bloody chunks which is more horrifying mentally.

>Fighting on the other hand may have >become way worse

It really hasnt for Western troops
The main role of modern US infantry is to engage the enemy from afar (by randomly shooting at their general direction) long enough for air support to come and kill them
I'd take that over Napoleonic bayonet fighting anyday

You really have to be unlucky to die as an US soldier nowdays

you damn well better be sorry for that atrocity

Kek
If you believe that, you should really check these soldiers accounts from the early 19th century

Does this qualify?

I don't think that being a guerilla fighter would be as scarring as fighting said guerilla fighter

I just read that chapter and I thought it was a physical affliction that caused his blindness

Only because the US's major operations are all asymmetric warfare. A serious war with dedicated front lines would kill off soldiers faster.

e.g. the British Army took very few casualties when fighting natives but took hundreds of thousands at Ypres.

nvm I checked and I did misread it

...

>it's another overweight, autistic teen Walt would totally handle combat better than all those cuck pussies if he had the chance

>when you are out you want nothing more than to go back
Most veteran's I've talked to couldn't wait to be mustered out.

>former Viet Cong
They basically all died in the Tet offensive.

>The Greeks glorified war and glorified personal accomplishments on the battlefield.
So do we. It's even more extreme these days. Kids can enjoy the most violent games and films as long there's no cuss word or side-boobs.

Yes it always existed
Difference is back in the day if you complained about it, they would just laugh at you and throw you off a cliff
I'm assuming you're speaking about actual combat stress, not the snowflake SJW definition of getting triggered because some politician you don't like made a speech in your pos liberal safe space

They also believed homo buttsex raised soldiers morale, I wouldn't exactly take their every word for it

>citing any single anecdote from Herodotus ever

Maybe it does.

I don't know about the viet cong, but north vietnamese soldiers got it too. Check out something like The Sorrow of War, which is an autobiographical account of the second Indochina war from a north vietnamese soldiers view. It's kind of like All Quiet on the Western Front.

There is always "trauma."
The question is...
Is it better to repress and get through the day by beating your wife and children; or being cold and aloof?
Or is it better to face trauma and one day find a solution to healing people from the beyond horrible things that happened to them.

I'm pretty sure a Roman vet from the Palace Guard (of Tiberius or Caligula I thinl) went on a rampage thinking he was killing Germans till he was told to stand down

I'm a little drunk and that post made me barf on "feoma"

>it ain't me
>it ain't me
>i ain't no senators son, son

>Has the cuckification of modern society played a role?
ironic, as this notion is why vets kill themselves instead of getting help.

i've heard that PTSD was actually unintentionally treated by travel to and from the war. unlike in the last 200 years, where transportation was measured in weeks, traveling away from the warzone to home with your band of soldiers was an inadvertent form of psycho-therapy.

compare that to today where soldiers can, and usually do, board a commercial aircraft takes them home in under a day, but usually as a single person.

there's no time to grieve with fellow soldiers and go through the stages of loss today.

kek

Take the Vietnam soldiers, they were treated like trash when they came back. Then look at someone like achilles, who gets respect from literally everyone because of how good he is at war.

It ain't gay if you're underway

>I have never read the Iliad nor the Odyssey.

I think that's the point he was trying to make; Achilles is a badass superman who the whole culture celebrates and he gets depression, so imagine how bad the regular dude has it.

Achilles ain't upset because of ptsd, he's mad that aggamemnon has shamed him publicly.

The point is that in ancient Greece the great warriors got praise for being killing machines, while Vietnam vets came back and we're constantly called monsters.

You're retarded. Guerillas generally suffer absolutely horrendous casualties.

So, in other words he didn't actually get respect.

They, or at least Achilles, gets a pat on the head as a very open and obvious attempt to manipulate him into doing what's good for his boss but less clearly good for him.

>less good for him

His entire reason for being is to obtain glory in war. When they piss him off enough for him to quit they have to overtly try and get him back.

>he's mad that aggamemnon has shamed him publicly.
Or because he lost his bottom boy Patroclus in the war

That was later, which brought about the the main point of the iliad: wrath of achilles.

>His entire reason for being is to obtain glory in war.

See, it's shit like this that I say you haven't read the books. Even ignoring the rather open and blatant line from Achilles when Odysseus goes to speak with him in Hades' realm, about how he'd rather be the poorest farmer or craftsmen rather than king of the dead; the Iliad itself has Achilles being a deeply ambivalent figure, and pretty uncaring about the whole "glory" aspect of it. When he realizes that all the glory he garners doesn't actually mean as much as an overking's whim, he loses interest in it.

>By god, I’d rather slave on earth for another man. Some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive—than rule down here over all the breathless dead.

So he had a change of heart once he died.

>cuckification

Why are you alive?

no there was absolutely no mental trauma back then because potato
people back then were completely immune to mental illnesses

why did you add ",now fuck off" ? do you want to feel edgy boi? im not op but there was literally no reason for you to act like that.

I recall I heard of an account of a Crusader Knight returning from his journeys, and was always silent and reserved for the rest of his days, never talking about his experiences in the Middle East.
If anyone knows what I'm talking about, I'd like to read it again

PTSD even exists for the macho guys who get treated like royalty by America. I had a guy commit suicide in Yemen a couple years back.

t. Naval special warfare

>Has OP known any Vietnam Vets, seen any homeless people, or been exposed to any pop culture dealing with Vietnam vets?
Considering that OP sounds like he's 13, I'd guess no.

Did you ever fear that those terrorists will get you, cut your head off before a camera and show it on internet?

Meanwhile Paris, while being a pussy ass loser, was banging the most perfect woman in history
Really makes you think

He absconded with another man's wife, he broke one of the most sacred ideas in Greek culture being the relationship between host and suppliant.

>chose to be a soldier
>get mental disease for doing your job

Are soldiers the dumbest?

When you know that you have something to come home to it helps a bit, but im willing to bet those on the pacific front had high rates

Hysterical blindness, basically your brain is always trying to protect you, and if you see something so horrible you cant handle it your mind will literally just shut your eyes off

>It seems like most soldiers until Vietnam dealt with war fairly we-

No matter how much you glorify war and martial accomplishments, you will still have to face the primal, animalistic, fear of "I AM REPEATEDLY PUT IN A SITUATION OF PERMANENT DANGER AND I WILL MOST LIKELY DIE PAINFULLY AND VIOLENTLY."

You can't combat that shit with ideals, that shit will never go away no matter the centuries.

>It seems like most soldiers until Vietnam dealt with war fairly well.
Yeah because all those fucking governments during WWI and WWII hid it pretty well and called the poor cunts who pointed it out cowards and pussies.

"Weak-minded pussies"

What kind of scum are you? What the hell have you ever done that would make men who suffered torturous conditions, under constant threat of ambush, thousands of miles from their home "weak-minded" by comparison?

The invention of gunpowder made warfare much more terrifying.

Imagine your a European man at arms kicking around circa 1250: You can defend yourself against any attack someone could direct at you.

Sword?
Block it or parry, or try to get out of the way
Lance?
Dodge it, knock it aside and duck, block it with your shield, wear armour
Arrows?
Block them, wear armour

The day handheld firearms became better than anything else was the day that war got scary as fuck.

There's really no defence against a bullet, you're life isn't in your hands anymore.

>it's ok to call black people subhuman and encourage the extermination of jews on this website as long as you support are troops

I have never seen an op more retarded than this one.

It was called Shell-Shock in WWI and WWII

>Some Afghan goatfucker hipfires an AK in your general direction then runs away
>Traumatized for life

HURRRR THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE SIR

>Arrows?
>Block them, wear armour

you can't bang shades m8

There was ptsd in world War 1 and 2 they just normally called it shell shock, the reason it did not exist before this was combat changed drastically as a result of world War one, battles became things that lasted days non stop, non stop artillery barrages for hours upon hours. Combat became a way of life for the soldiers under constant threat, this becomes worse in Vietnam with asymmetrical fighting, due to the inability to know where the enemy will come from, or who it will be even as they no longer even use uniforms.
But it had other names in the past and there were significantly less cases.

Ok hear me out, it's pretty simple. You know in traditional societies, you would have different castes. Different classes of people. One of these castes or classes was the Warrior caste. This would be people who didn't work, didn't administer rites or hold any public office, but strictly fought in battles. Your average joe was not a warrior, and generally would not have to fight.
Now with the advent of firearms, suddenly you didn't need lifelong training to be a warrior any more. The warrior class essentially disappeared around the time the Flintlock became widely distributed. Now Joe Schmo could just point a boomstick at mr. Nobleman and send him to meet his makers.
So then, warlords and generals were now forced to recruit as many men as possible who could hold guns, because that's what it all came down to all of a sudden, whoever had the most boomsticks was now lord of the land. This is in part because of the meta-war that was employed, with big battles in open fields. The simple tactics meant more guys on your side = You win.
And thus entire populations started beign employed for war. You were now a soldier, not a warrior. You don't have the physical or mental training that a warrior would traditionally have for warfare, because it was his entire purpose in life, but you are forced to endure it like everyone else. Hence PTSD and such diagnosis.

>Bottom Left
>"Frankly, I had enjoyed the war"

You can just see that crazy bastard saying something like "Oh, I feel miles better now, doctor. May I please go back to the Trench?"

Even the Romans noted how people seemed shaken as fuck when they came back from war lad.