Quote ="Mintball"Lots of interesting points here (and on the thread in general). I think stress is a factor – and while I do think we were not 'designed' at all but have evolved, I don't think that living in very densely populated areas is what we have (yet?) evolved to be able to comfortably and easily do.
I'd also pick up on what Jerry said: I remember meeting a very elderly man once, who had been in the war. He couldn't get over the culture of counselling and stress etc, and effectively said that people should have some 'stiff upper lip' – he was a bit more East End working class about it, though.
On the other hand, someone I knew tells the tale of their father, who went to war (just after my friend was born) and came back apparently okay, but had turned into someone who abused both his wife and son, and drank himself into an early grave. He had, apparently, been standing next to a friend when that friend's head was blown off.
If we look back at WWI, we know there were many, many cases of, in effect, stress – or shell shock as it was called, and many were often 'diagnosed' with execution, with the sufferer condemned as a coward.
I do think there are plenty of things we know more about and understand more these days, and can therefore diagnose better. Whether there are also conditions (if that's an acceptable term), such as ADD and so on that are caused or triggered or exacerbated by some very recent factors (additives in processed food, for instance) is another question. But it may be that there are many more factors involved.'"
PTSD can be crippling. I lived here with vietnam vets who you can't have anything bar compasssion and empathy for. Not because of any political agenda or bias for war, just they state these boys came home in. And where then treated poorly by their own people.
I was personally very pleased when Professor Simon Charles Wessely got awarded in the Honours List for services to Military Healthcare and to Psychological Medicine. Amongst all the posh s with their business contacts and the twisted ear mob and the bunch that used to play sticky biscuit at Eton.
