The War and Mental Illness

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Professor

Course

29 July 2008

War and Mental Illness : The Failure to Properly Diagnose and Treat Posttraumatic Stress Dis among US Veterans

The history of man is replete with conflict . It seems that since recorded history man has fought wars within their own group or against outsiders . Historians can study these conflicts and provide information on battle tactics , war heroes , war booty and the impact on politics . But rarely can one find an extensive of one major consequence of war - soldiers coming home with various mental illnesses and

one of the most popular of which is known as the Posttraumatic Stress Dis ( PTSD . The misdiagnosis and mistreatment of veterans with PTSD is due to the tendency of the military to downplay the impact of the illness and also because PTSD is often masked by its symptoms which are equally serious such as depression , substance abuse , and eating diss etc . Health workers believe that the US Armed Forces should come out in the open and acknowledge the severity of the problem in the hopes of developing effective treatments for soldiers suffering from PTSD

Background

Since the beginning of recorded history , tribes , people groups , and nations are always at war whether in a state of readiness or actually in combat trying to eliminate the other army from the face of the earth . It maybe a civil war , a war for independence , an attempt to repeal colonizers , an international conflict or the more recent war against terrorism but it is all the same in terms of the human aspect of the conflict . Even with highly advanced weaponry and gadgets modern war cannot eliminate the need to send in troops and allowing them to fight man versus man

Historians can collect artifacts , study documents , and gather data regarding war exploits - war booty collected , territories conquered , and the political ramifications of the war 's aftermath - and yet fail to give information regarding the mental state of the combatants . Everyone knows what happened in the American War for Independence . The inhabitants of the colonies successfully destroyed British hegemony . But little is known about the soldiers who lost their arms and legs in the bloody conflict . Little is known about the mental state of the enlisted men who saw their comrades obliterated by exploding canon balls . And no one knew how they tried to cope after leaving the army and coming home to their respective families

There is evidence to show that PTSD is prevalent among soldiers in the Civil War , World War I , World War II , the Korean War and the Vietnam War . But these symptoms were misdiagnosed . One of the possible reasons why PTSD was clouded in mystery can be attributed to the relatively recent emergence of modern psychology - supported by a more scientific approach . According to Coon psychology began as part of philosophy but as a science it dates back only about 120 years . The science of psychology began in 1879 at Leipzig , Germany where Wilhelm Wundt had a laboratory studying conscious...