Beyond short-term combat fatigue, many soldiers suffer serious and long-lasting psychological damage as a result of combat experience, sometimes enough to knock them out of fighting as if they were physically wounded. In World War II, the US Army had to send home nearly 400,000 soldiers for psychiatric problems. Many people have been known to go off to war and suffer from what experimental research has confirmed as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a renamed physiological disorder. This new name is simply for an old disorder that has been around for thousands of years, and recently associated with Vietnam Veterans. Whether it be symptoms, long term effects or treatments all of the information of this old physiological disorder are exactly similar to the new name Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
These effects have been called, in various wars, "shell shock," "combat neuroses," or "post-traumatic stress disorder" (PTSD) all controversial diagnosis". Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which physical harm occurred or was threatened (Wilner 40). Many symptoms of this disorder have been found in Vietnam Veterans. "The intensified destruction of twentieth-century wars may make combat trauma more pervasive than ever, especially since World War II" (Kulka 20). Physiological trauma is a disorder that many doctors have found to be very present in war veterans.
During World War I, British forces lost 80,000 soldiers, one-seventh of all disability discharges to shell shock (PTSD 3). "Shell shock" was a very common disorder for many soldiers, as the percent of this injury increased, military leader's began to think that it was going to be used as a escape route. A British report after the war recommended that pensions be denied to victims of shell shock because "no such thing exists" (Kessler 55).
