I saw a video today about the sniper who had the longest distance kill in the world and he talked about his PTSD. I was wondering why PTSD has such a bad reputation and isn’t discussed more in the public discourse. Is it because the circumstances for example in war changed ? Armies in the antique or Middle Ages were huge and a broad majority of soldiers must have been absolutely traumatized when they returned, so why did no one care about them ?
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While the diagnosis might be relatively new, there is good evidence that the condition isn’t. Check out https://www.researchgate.net/publication/270911020_Nothing_New_under_the_Sun_Post-Traumatic_Stress_Disorders_in_the_Ancient_World
Suffers were considered to have been afflicted by the spirits of those killed around the time of the Assyrian dynasty (1300-609 BC)
PTSD is a label that’s applied to people who show enough symptoms from a specific list. People have always shown those symptoms, but the label of PTSD is relatively new.
We do have ancient texts describing the symptoms of PTSD as we know of it today so it have been around forever. But mental health, especially among veterans, were not studied and talked about as much before as it is today. So we do not know how the rates have changed or how the symptoms might have been different.
There is some indications that PTSD is in fact a bigger problem now then it used to be. Some of the blame have been put on the short distance between war zones and homes. It was not that long ago before soldiers had to wait weeks and months to be transported from their combat possitions back to their home and it would take weeks for letters to and from their loved ones. This gives them a way to distance their life as active combatants from their home life. However now you can have soldiers having a video chat with their family in the morning, go out on patrols at lunch where they would see people getitng killed, some at their own hands, and then fly back home in the evening to be with their family. It is possible that this is something that can trigger PTSD as there is not as much time to process events and give distance to them as there used to be.
PTSD has always existed. In WWI, it was called “shell shock” and was typically untreated. There’s countless reports through history of soldiers returning from battle changed in bad ways. Before the 19th century, we lacked the framework to even discuss psychology let alone begin to understand it. But that doesn’t mean psychological issues didn’t exist then, just that we didn’t understand what they were.
PTSD is nothing new. Back during WWI it was called “shell shock”. Back during the middle ages veterans and society as a whole had so many other issues (deafness, syphilis, and so on) that PTSD just got written up to “drinks too much” or “just a shitty person” that it didn’t get noticed. It’s not like what we’d call medicine, psychology, or science existed back then.
I remember reading about knights having constant nightmares and regularly waking up screaming.
PTSD has been around since the beginning of time and it accurs in animals as well as in humans. some Elephants for example have PTSD because of poachers who slaughter their families at early age only to cut off their tusks and leave the baby elephant an orphan. As a result many elephants who bern victims of poaching will get into a frenzy if they see humans. The reason why i think why its not so commonly heard is because its a hard topic to discuss and only lately (late 19 hundreds) people started taking the condition seriously
PTSD had many names earlier in human history. Even if the individual symptomes that get asserted to it had little changes to them. “a warriors pain”, “shellshocked”, “after war bliss” are used synomymes.
It’s not the most solid historical evidence But in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla you see Eivor and the resident wise woman talking about Eivors hallucinations. Though in the videogame obviously there is supernatural play happening the roles would be the same for mundane traumas of war, and it models how ancient therapies would happen.
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