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Cultural shift in mental illness: a comparison of stress responses in World War I and the Vietnam War

OBJECTIVES: Post-traumatic stress disorder is an established diagnostic category. In particular, over the past 20 years, there has been an interest in culture as a fundamental factor in post-traumatic stress disorder symptom manifestation. However, only a very limited portion of this literature stud...

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Autores principales: Skinner, Rasjid, Kaplick, Paul M
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5718313/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29230306
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2054270417746061
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author Skinner, Rasjid
Kaplick, Paul M
author_facet Skinner, Rasjid
Kaplick, Paul M
author_sort Skinner, Rasjid
collection PubMed
description OBJECTIVES: Post-traumatic stress disorder is an established diagnostic category. In particular, over the past 20 years, there has been an interest in culture as a fundamental factor in post-traumatic stress disorder symptom manifestation. However, only a very limited portion of this literature studies the historical variability of post-traumatic stress within a particular culture. DESIGN: Therefore, this study examines whether stress responses to violence associated with armed conflicts have been a culturally stable reaction in Western troops. SETTING: We have compared historical records from World War I to those of the Vietnam War. Reference is also made to observations of combat trauma reactions in pre-World War I conflicts, World War II, the Korean War, the Falklands War, and the First Gulf War. PARTICIPANTS: The data set consisted of literature that was published during and after these armed conflicts. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Accounts of World War I Shell Shock that describe symptom presentation, incidence (both acute and delayed), and prognosis were compared to the observations made of Vietnam War post-traumatic stress disorder victims. RESULTS: Results suggest that the conditions observed in Vietnam veterans were not the same as those which were observed in World War I trauma victims. CONCLUSIONS: The paper argues that the concept of post-traumatic stress disorder cannot be stretched to cover the typical battle trauma reactions of World War I. It is suggested that relatively subtle changes in culture, over little more than a generation, have had a profound effect on how mental illness forms, manifests itself, and is effectively treated. We add new evidence to the argument that post-traumatic stress disorder in its current conceptualisation does not adequately account, not only for ethnocultural variation but also for historical variation in stress responses within the same culture.
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spelling pubmed-57183132017-12-11 Cultural shift in mental illness: a comparison of stress responses in World War I and the Vietnam War Skinner, Rasjid Kaplick, Paul M JRSM Open Research OBJECTIVES: Post-traumatic stress disorder is an established diagnostic category. In particular, over the past 20 years, there has been an interest in culture as a fundamental factor in post-traumatic stress disorder symptom manifestation. However, only a very limited portion of this literature studies the historical variability of post-traumatic stress within a particular culture. DESIGN: Therefore, this study examines whether stress responses to violence associated with armed conflicts have been a culturally stable reaction in Western troops. SETTING: We have compared historical records from World War I to those of the Vietnam War. Reference is also made to observations of combat trauma reactions in pre-World War I conflicts, World War II, the Korean War, the Falklands War, and the First Gulf War. PARTICIPANTS: The data set consisted of literature that was published during and after these armed conflicts. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Accounts of World War I Shell Shock that describe symptom presentation, incidence (both acute and delayed), and prognosis were compared to the observations made of Vietnam War post-traumatic stress disorder victims. RESULTS: Results suggest that the conditions observed in Vietnam veterans were not the same as those which were observed in World War I trauma victims. CONCLUSIONS: The paper argues that the concept of post-traumatic stress disorder cannot be stretched to cover the typical battle trauma reactions of World War I. It is suggested that relatively subtle changes in culture, over little more than a generation, have had a profound effect on how mental illness forms, manifests itself, and is effectively treated. We add new evidence to the argument that post-traumatic stress disorder in its current conceptualisation does not adequately account, not only for ethnocultural variation but also for historical variation in stress responses within the same culture. SAGE Publications 2017-12-04 /pmc/articles/PMC5718313/ /pubmed/29230306 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2054270417746061 Text en © The Author(s) 2017 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle Research
Skinner, Rasjid
Kaplick, Paul M
Cultural shift in mental illness: a comparison of stress responses in World War I and the Vietnam War
title Cultural shift in mental illness: a comparison of stress responses in World War I and the Vietnam War
title_full Cultural shift in mental illness: a comparison of stress responses in World War I and the Vietnam War
title_fullStr Cultural shift in mental illness: a comparison of stress responses in World War I and the Vietnam War
title_full_unstemmed Cultural shift in mental illness: a comparison of stress responses in World War I and the Vietnam War
title_short Cultural shift in mental illness: a comparison of stress responses in World War I and the Vietnam War
title_sort cultural shift in mental illness: a comparison of stress responses in world war i and the vietnam war
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5718313/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29230306
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2054270417746061
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