What does being shell-shocked really mean?

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What does being shell-shocked really mean?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

It’s a term for what we now call PTSD – Post -Traumatic Stress Disorder. It was recognised during the first world war, where soldiers would have severe mental breakdowns after, or during, combat. The sheer industrial brutality of the war was unequalled in history to that point. Commanders discovered first-hand that you’d put a soldier on a mounted machine gun, he’d spend six or eight hours mowing down barely-adult men like a farmer harvests a field of wheat, and by the end of it he’d be so psychologically broken that he had to be discharged from the army and sent home, ready for the next gunner to take his place.

Anonymous 0 Comments

It’s a term for what we now call PTSD – Post -Traumatic Stress Disorder. It was recognised during the first world war, where soldiers would have severe mental breakdowns after, or during, combat. The sheer industrial brutality of the war was unequalled in history to that point. Commanders discovered first-hand that you’d put a soldier on a mounted machine gun, he’d spend six or eight hours mowing down barely-adult men like a farmer harvests a field of wheat, and by the end of it he’d be so psychologically broken that he had to be discharged from the army and sent home, ready for the next gunner to take his place.

Anonymous 0 Comments

its a form of PTSD. the 1st world war saw troops being left in trenches under fire for extended periods, sometimes literally days, just waiting, waiting for that one in a million shell that was going to land in thier trench and kill them……. for days on end. they saw sights of great horror and terror, half rotted corpses unearthed by the shelling, wounded freinds sliding into deep mud and drowning, or killed by posion gas. they were faced with the threat of death and dismemberment and were helpless to protect themselves agianst it.

It broke people, mentally. they became nervous wrecks, scared of loud bangs that reminded them of gunfire, unable to function properly, unfit for further service but physically unharmed. It had been seen before, in limited numbers (looking back on history with hindsight, we can see records of people acting in manner similar to PTSD sufferers that weren’t recognised as such at the time), but the scale, intensity and especially the duration of the fighting in WW1 caused cases to soar to levels never seen before and the issue gained recognition from the general public for the first time.

thier was a lot of debate around it at the time, mostly related to a belief in many circles it was a personal failure, as either weakness of character, or being faked by cowards to avoid thier duty. This was still the early days of psychology as a serious, scientific field, and a lot we take for granted now was just not know or purely folk remedies. WW1 was the time that these psychological effects of war were really treated as being actual conditions which could be treated as oppose to just being “how that person is” form now on.

Some officials were also hesitant to call it a real thing, because they were concerned about issues with discipline and legal liability if it was real. If a shell shocked man was a medical casualty and could not fight on, what was to stop any shirker from claiming it to get out of combat? Would shell shock victims be eligible for war wound pensions, thus exposing the government to a massive potential ongoing cost and room for more fraud?

i must point out Im not saying these people were *right* in thier beliefs, but just they held them, and it was part of the debate at the time.

Anonymous 0 Comments

its a form of PTSD. the 1st world war saw troops being left in trenches under fire for extended periods, sometimes literally days, just waiting, waiting for that one in a million shell that was going to land in thier trench and kill them……. for days on end. they saw sights of great horror and terror, half rotted corpses unearthed by the shelling, wounded freinds sliding into deep mud and drowning, or killed by posion gas. they were faced with the threat of death and dismemberment and were helpless to protect themselves agianst it.

It broke people, mentally. they became nervous wrecks, scared of loud bangs that reminded them of gunfire, unable to function properly, unfit for further service but physically unharmed. It had been seen before, in limited numbers (looking back on history with hindsight, we can see records of people acting in manner similar to PTSD sufferers that weren’t recognised as such at the time), but the scale, intensity and especially the duration of the fighting in WW1 caused cases to soar to levels never seen before and the issue gained recognition from the general public for the first time.

thier was a lot of debate around it at the time, mostly related to a belief in many circles it was a personal failure, as either weakness of character, or being faked by cowards to avoid thier duty. This was still the early days of psychology as a serious, scientific field, and a lot we take for granted now was just not know or purely folk remedies. WW1 was the time that these psychological effects of war were really treated as being actual conditions which could be treated as oppose to just being “how that person is” form now on.

Some officials were also hesitant to call it a real thing, because they were concerned about issues with discipline and legal liability if it was real. If a shell shocked man was a medical casualty and could not fight on, what was to stop any shirker from claiming it to get out of combat? Would shell shock victims be eligible for war wound pensions, thus exposing the government to a massive potential ongoing cost and room for more fraud?

i must point out Im not saying these people were *right* in thier beliefs, but just they held them, and it was part of the debate at the time.

Anonymous 0 Comments

It’s basically an outdated term for PTSD. In WWI they discovered that way more soldiers returned from the trenches with severe mental health problems than in previous wars, so it must have been caused by something that was new to this war.

Doctors at the time thought it was brain damage caused by having lots of artillery shells going off near you (while artillery wasn’t new, the sheer amount employed in WWI was), so they called it “shell shock”. Today, it is usually seen as PTSD caused by the unprecedented intensity of trench warfare.

Anonymous 0 Comments

It’s basically an outdated term for PTSD. In WWI they discovered that way more soldiers returned from the trenches with severe mental health problems than in previous wars, so it must have been caused by something that was new to this war.

Doctors at the time thought it was brain damage caused by having lots of artillery shells going off near you (while artillery wasn’t new, the sheer amount employed in WWI was), so they called it “shell shock”. Today, it is usually seen as PTSD caused by the unprecedented intensity of trench warfare.

Anonymous 0 Comments

So for the origin of the shell-shocked, it goes back to ww1. Many many soldiers developed PTSD as a result of their experiences fighting. There was a lot of artillery and bombings (which were referred to as shells and shelling). So the people who got PTSD and later would react to loud noises, it got called shell-shock. They literally looked shocked when they heard it, before having whatever physical response they would have (eg catatonic, running, screaming). Reading that bit back it sounds horrible but put it like this but it is that people have different responses in those scenarios and don’t want to go into details here

As time has gone on we have learned more about the problem and given it a better descriptive term, post traumatic stress disorder. We have also learned that it’s not just the meltdowns in response to a trigger that people can have, but much much more that they experience.

Because she’ll shock was so common following ww1, it became a common term. And as it was semi-descriptive, the general public could understand it, so used it. Gradually the term would get used to describe someone who has frozen or had a change in activity in response to something major, be that anything from a sudden loud noise, to a new dad with the look of “oh my god, my baby has just been born” (I’ve worked in maternity hospital so this is a look I see a lot!). It’s no longer used by the medical profession

Tldr: term comes from wwi and was term used for the previously unrecognised/poorly recognised condition PTSD which was a result of experiences being shelled (bombed) during the fighting. Later went on to mean a sudden but transient change in behaviour in response to any sudden event

Anonymous 0 Comments

So for the origin of the shell-shocked, it goes back to ww1. Many many soldiers developed PTSD as a result of their experiences fighting. There was a lot of artillery and bombings (which were referred to as shells and shelling). So the people who got PTSD and later would react to loud noises, it got called shell-shock. They literally looked shocked when they heard it, before having whatever physical response they would have (eg catatonic, running, screaming). Reading that bit back it sounds horrible but put it like this but it is that people have different responses in those scenarios and don’t want to go into details here

As time has gone on we have learned more about the problem and given it a better descriptive term, post traumatic stress disorder. We have also learned that it’s not just the meltdowns in response to a trigger that people can have, but much much more that they experience.

Because she’ll shock was so common following ww1, it became a common term. And as it was semi-descriptive, the general public could understand it, so used it. Gradually the term would get used to describe someone who has frozen or had a change in activity in response to something major, be that anything from a sudden loud noise, to a new dad with the look of “oh my god, my baby has just been born” (I’ve worked in maternity hospital so this is a look I see a lot!). It’s no longer used by the medical profession

Tldr: term comes from wwi and was term used for the previously unrecognised/poorly recognised condition PTSD which was a result of experiences being shelled (bombed) during the fighting. Later went on to mean a sudden but transient change in behaviour in response to any sudden event