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World War II Vets and PTSD

Post-traumatic Stress Disorder is emerging just now from WWII veterans. A Veterans Administration psychologist explains why:

‘For many World War II veterans, decades-old memories of war aren’t as deeply buried as they once believed. The veterans administration estimates that 5% of the 2.5 million US World War II vets suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports. Older vets came of age when “expressing psychological symptoms or distress was pretty stigmatized,” a psychiatrist says—meaning emotional wounds often went untreated.
So why is PTSD emerging just now? The changes that come with aging are a factor. The death of a spouse or friend can trigger symptoms, as can health problems. For some, old age simply allows more time to think. “We find many individuals who have … worked out ways to develop defenses,” says one VA psychologist. “But as they get older those defenses don’t work quite as well.”’
—Sarah Quinn SOURCE: Cleveland Plain Dealer

July 17, 2009 - Posted by pochp | Medicine, Neurology, PSYCHOLOGY | , , , , | 2 Comments

2 Comments

  1. Very intelligent comment and suggestion which I myself should have made Gryph. lol
    My father was also a WWII vet who showed strong signs of battle fatigue or PTSD. Cancer got him in 2007.

    Comment by pochp | July 18, 2009

  2. If you are an American WWII vet you must be at the most circa 80 years old, and no younger than your middle 70s. The war started for the U.S. in 1942. To be old enough to volunteer when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor you must have been born around 1925.

    Old age by itself creates many psychological difficulties a lot of which are related to simply the biology of growing old. What we now call PTSD they called Battle Fatigue then.

    My best source says that there are 3.5 million surviving World War II veterans. My sources doesn’t break this down into combat/non-combat figures but common sense tells us that there are MUCH fewer of the former than the latter. For argument’s sake let’s say that there are less than one million combat veterans. My guess is 750K or less.

    Now out of this number we need to subtract how many are not included in the survey on WWII and PTSD. Do they consider those who do not seek treatment at all from the Vet. Admin. (my father was one of those)? How many can be classified as suffering from normal onset of senility, senile demtia, and/or Alzheimer’s? How many can be classified as suffering from one of the mentioned old age disorders AND PTSD? How difficult must it be to be able to distinguish between old age disorders and Battle Fatigue? How many had previously been diagnosed with Battle Fatigue?

    I have trouble seeing how even if this can be statistically proven that it makes much difference. Whether you call it PTSD or Battle Fatigue makes little difference. Perhaps this is an attempt to say that we are better today than we were then in taking care of our vets. Really? OK, I’ll give you we are more medically advanced. That’s not much news to me.

    Tell me how we are better at PREVENTING Battle Fatigue now than we were then and you will get my attention. I have a suggestion . . . find a way to prevent the “Battle” part instead of the “Fatigue” part and then you will have a good start.

    Comment by Gryphon | July 18, 2009


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