Post Traumatic Stress Disorder In Veterans

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Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or better known as PTSD is an illness affecting many people in the world, but its most common victims are the veterans of war. One in eight veterans return from war afflicted with PTSD and the number continually rises with war time atrocities becoming worse as new terror organizations form. The things our soldiers see greatly traumatize leaving them scarred for life and give them an incomprehensible fear of it, leading to a difficult life in which they can’t live freely. PTSD, a steadily rising mental illness caused by a severe traumatic event, treated merely by anti-depressant drugs and verbal therapy, causes the fight or flight instinct to malfunction and cause hormonal imbalances, resulting in periods of violence …show more content…
This disorder 's earliest official record is believed to be that of the Greek writer Herodotus, he describes the battle of Marathon between the Greek and Persians. In the record, he states how for days after the battle men had gone crazy, he says how some had gone blind after seeing loved ones killed, and some even committed suicide. "For instance, the Greek historian Herodotus, in writing of the battle of Marathon in 490 B.C., cites an Athenian warrior who went permanently blind when the soldier standing next to him was killed, although the blinded soldier “was wounded in no part of his body.” So, too, blindness, deafness, and paralysis, among other conditions, are common forms of “conversion reactions” experienced and well-documented among soldiers today"(Steve Bentley). The world wars were when PTSD began to rise. The new weapons caused unseen atrocities which many men were not prepared for. This was then responded to by the idea that someone was a coward if they were scared which PTSD causes that irrational fear, so many men did not confess that they were suffering from “shell shock” as it was called. So for plenty of years, doctors were not receiving accurate statistics due to the lack of diagnosis since people would not admit to their illness. Yet PTSD had still not been recognized as a true health problem until sometime around the Vietnam War, when doctors began to realize that there was a serious health issue that was not being addressed. They then decided to begin a diagnosis to find out what was happening, later this diagnosis became known as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or

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