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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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.
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