...A Review of “The Shock of War” By the end of World War One the British Army had dealt with thousands and thousands of cases with shell shock. The article explores how the army tackled this extreme trauma, and how it was regarded by those back home. Shell Shock was a term used during the First World War to describe the psychological trauma suffered by men serving on the war's key battlefronts. The intensity of the essentially artillery battles fought along these war fronts. It often caused neurotic cracks to appear in otherwise mentally stable soldiers. Men who saw service of any great length on an active front quickly came to recognize the symptoms of shell shock among their fellow men. Recognition in the form of military authority was rather slower to develop. At first shell shock victims were believed to be suffering from the direct physical effects of shell blasts or toxic exposure. Symptoms varied widely in intensity, ranging from moderate panic attacks. Which sometimes caused men to flee the battlefield: a crime which was invariably regarded as rank cowardice and which resulted in a court martial for desertion to effective mental and physical paralysis. Sent home to recover, many shell shock victims recovered over time, whereas many others continued to feel its effects for years afterwards. Treatment for shell shock was primitive at best and dangerous at worst; psychological theories governing its treatment developed only gradually. The shock of war article was well...
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...Analysing aspects of form, structure, and language, explore the ways in which Barker present the horrors of War In the novel ‘Regeneration’, Pat Barker uses form, structure and language to present the horrors of war. The consequences of the horrors of war are also presented through psychological factors and vivid imagery which Barker creates. It is also dues to these horrors that there is protest against the war, which is also shown in the novel. The novel is set in a mental hospital called Craiglockhart in Scotland in 1917. By using Craiglockhart as the setting, Barker shows how the men still suffer from the experiences of the war. Craiglockhart existed in World War 1, and helped in dealing with the 800,000 cases of shell shock from the British army. Madness is a minor theme in Regeneration, and helps present the horrors of war. It is the main reason why these soldiers are at Craiglockhart. These men are not accepted in society because of their ‘madness’, as it is seen as the inability to act in a manner that is considered normal. The symptoms of madness range from a fear of blood to mutism, from an inability to eat to a vocal protest of the war. For many men the treatment they receive leaves them feeling emasculated, shamed and isolated over their breakdown and their problems are only made worse. Barker uses each characters experience to show the horrors of war. Each character comes in at a different point in the novel, for example Yealland is introduced towards the...
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...memories of War Post-Traumatic Stress disorder also known as PTSD is an emotional illness which is caused by a traumatic experience in one’s own life that was frightening, life-threatening, or highly unsafe. Individuals who suffer from PTSD are very sensitive to normal life and cannot function how they once were. Combat Stress Reaction (CSR), more commonly known as “shell shock”, is a type of illness that World War I soldiers suffered. Shell shock is another kind of psychological illness that is almost like PTSD. However, its illness causes a soldier to decrease his fighting ability due to shock waves from artillery shells during the frontline battle. These psychological illnesses are more commonly known with war soldiers who have experienced some kind of horrific event and what a soldier remembers from his experience causes destruction psychologically and mentally. Veteran soldiers who return home suffer with this type of disorder and therefore, must find a way to cope with it. People and more specifically soldiers cope with the memories of war in many ways. They either cope with it through avoiding people they love or keep distant from society, through anger and hostility, and focusing on a certain object or thing that they can use to cope with the memories of war. There are two different stories that show how a Native American and an African American soldier cope with their memories of war. Both stories are from two different time periods: one from World War I and the other...
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...Negative Effects on America Resulting from World War 2 Jessica Raby University of Phoenix (Axia College) Negative Effects on America Resulting from World War 2 The time period of 1939 to 1945 was a very devastating time for a lot of individuals especially American’s. During this time frame the world was involved in the crisis called World War ll. World Warll had a large negative impact on America’s economy as a whole it affected America’s financial status greatly, American soldiers also suffered a large variety of mental as well as physical health issues during and after World War 2, and many American’s lost their lives for the cause. The major decision to go into war all began on December 7, 1941 when the Japanese forces bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii which resulted in the United States making the decision to go into war. Loosing Pearl Harbor had a large impact on America’s armed forces because it took out a major battle station, many men and women, along with a large portion of the United States’ military resources. Was the decision to go to war worth what America had to suffer? America’s financial status was affected greatly by the impact of World War ll. America was already in a very deep financial stand due to the Great Depression and the effects World War l. The world already repositioned world power and influence. America was already trying to come back from all of the earlier tragedies and in going to war again it only led America to suffer more and to use what...
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...Wilfred Owen Task 1: The Next War The author portrays Death as a personified character who does not cause the soldiers fear or grief. Although death has come in many forms the soldier has accepted that it is everywhere and has become unaffected by it. This is emphasised in the epigraph in the first stanza and further supported in the first line of the second stanza “we’ve walked quite friendly up to Death, sat down and eaten with him, cool and bland”. This highlights the soldier’s acceptance of death and war and how they relate. The soldier has ‘leagued with him’ and so the soldiers laugh as they have killed just like Death has. Anthem for Doomed Youth This poem draws an analogy between the death of the soldiers and a traditional funeral. It is ironically titled an ‘anthem’ which is usually praiseful or celebratory. The author makes a direct comparison between the ‘choirs’ and the wailing of Shells, and prayers to the rapid sounds of machine guns and rifles. The opening line the soldiers are referred to as cattle, which emphasize how insignificant each live is in the war scene. There are no prayers or choirs mourning for the soldiers who are slaughtered on the battlefield. It is only in the last few lines that the author portrays the silent grieving of the families and loved ones at home. The mood of the poem changes as the author then contrasts the emotion felt back home compared to the ‘cattle’ like death of the soldiers who are around other men whose death...
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...of soldiers in the war. World War One is known as “the war to end all wars”[1]. The war cultured “extreme suffering” which inspired many writers. The war also aided the advancement of attitudes towards the emotionality of men. Individual suffering is manipulated to intensify the pain by isolating singular characters. Sacrifices of the men force the reader into an uncomfortable atmosphere. Sebastian Faulks’ Bildungsroman Birdsong highlights the suffering of individual to understate that of the masses. Regeneration, written by Pat Barker in 1991, uses factual occurrences of Sassoon and Owen’s lives in Craiglockhart to detail historic experiences of suffering. The poetry features both pro and anti-war perspectives from historical figures featured within Regeneration. Birdsong emotively persuades readers that individual anguish has detrimental effects on soldier’s lives intensifying their suffering. The texts use third person narrative to create emotive circumstances which manipulate the reader into understanding the suffering as either mass or individual. The writers’ portrayal of individual suffering was the most poignant compared to the subversion of widespread suffering. The texts expose the stigmatization of physical disability as a cause of individual suffering. Historically, the dependence of disabled life reflects the burden faced by soldiers of returning to normality. Wilfred Owen’s poem Disabled explores the first-hand impacts and consequences of war, coupled with the persistent...
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...WWI has carried on a life-lasting change socially, physically, and mentally on those who had partaken in or been a witness to the 4 year war. Millions of soldiers who have been drafted into the war were stripped from their families, and more importantly their well-being. As life during WWI went on the physiological aspect is what stuck with soldiers throughout the rest of their life. . As we can see the A.Q.O.T.W.F the once glorious and patriotic deed of joining the German army was quickly overshadowed by the need to simply survive the war. War is known to carry a long lasting psychological effect on those who endured it known as shell-shock or PTSD. “War is organized murder and nothing else” according to Harry Patch, the last surviving soldier of WWI. As the friends of Paul Baumer drop dead one by one, the sick and gruesome reality of WWI sets in as he is beginning to become isolated...
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...The term stress has been synonymous to with the current Y generation residing on this planet. The noun stress was first introduced in the 20th century whereby the term stress had none of its contemporary connotations before the 1920’s. it is the form of the Middle English destresse (Keil R.M.K,2004;Coping and Stress) derived via Old French from the Latin stringere “ to have to draw tight”. The word had been long used in the field of Physics to annotate the internal distribution of a force exerted on a material body which results in strain. In the 1920s and '30s, biological and psychological circles occasionally used the term to refer to a mental strain or to a harmful environmental agent that could cause illness used it in 1926 to refer to...
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...incident. Most think of veterans of war having PTSD. Actually PTSD is more common than you think. It can happen because of a car accident, a fire, a rape, child abuse, or even events like September 11,2001. Patients with PTSD experience the traumatic event repeatedly and can last for months or even years after the original event. Over the years there have been many studies to diagnosis and help treat patients with PTSD. Post-traumatic stress disorder was officially introduced in the psychiatric world in the 1980 according to the publication of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Third Edition (DSM-III) by The American Psychiatric Association (APA). However the signs and symptoms can be noted as far back as the fifth century. During the First World War soldiers were showing signs of fatigue, impaired vision, nightmares, confusions, and seizure like tendencies. Medical professional didn’t understand the cause and called this reaction “shell shocked” since there were no physical evidence of trauma and as a result the behavior was often perceived as being a coward. In fact some believed that based on the idea that soldiers were faking their psychological problems to escape the front lines, many were put on trial and some were even executed. By the end of the war in 1918, more than 100,000 soldiers from the British, Canadian and American armies showed signs and symptoms related to shell shock. During the Second World War, psychologists and experts began making...
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...Adam Tennis Professor Martinez English 101 140531 Writer’s Checklist for Cause and Effect Essay 1. Have I identified the cause or effect I am analyzing in my thesis? 2. Have I explained the cause-and-effect relationship convincingly? 3. Have I organized my causes and/or effects logically? 4. Have I used sound logic? 5. Have I concluded my essay effectively? 6. Have I proofread thoroughly? Adam Tennis Professor Martinez English 101 140531 PTSD: A Battle that lasts beyond the Combat Zone I will be using this paper to highlight some of the cause and effect of a familiar disorder, Post-traumatic stress disorder. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is currently an ongoing issue that many veterans are dealing with after Iraq and Afghanistan and it is something that you live with for the rest of your life. As more and more veterans are being diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after returning from combat zones it has become a hot topic. This is a disease that lasts long past the combat zone. There has been an extreme amount of research poured into the treatment of this disorder but still little has been yielded for the treatment or even a baseline that causes the disorder. “In recent years there has been a rapidly growing amount of research on the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Our recent metaanalysis suggested that exposure to therapy and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) are among the...
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...stress have been recorded in both military and civilian populations (Lasiuk & Hegadoren, 2006). Early accounts described the effect of battle conditions on soldiers; "soldier's heart" and "nostalgia" were the terms for traumatic stress reactions used during the American Civil War. As warfare techniques and strategies changed, so did the depiction of soldiers' traumatic stress reactions. The advent of heavy explosives in World War I led to the attribution of symptoms to "shell shock," giving a more physiological description of the effects from explosions (Benedek & Ursano, 2009). Even with a more physical explanation of traumatic stress (i.e., shell shock), a prevailing attitude remained that the traumatic stress response was due to a character flaw. For instance, a soldier's pain at that time was often seen as a symptom of homesickness. In spite of the efforts of Charcot, Janet, and Freud, who described the psychogenic origin of symptoms as a response to psychological trauma (Lasiuk & Hegadoren, 2006), World War II military recruits were screened in attempt to identify those "who were afflicted with moral weakness," which would prevent them from entering military service. Sharease was discharged from the army after being seen as unstable. Sharease is a victim of military sexual trauma (MST), which is defined by Title 38 U.S Code 1720D as "psychological trauma resulting from a physical assault of a sexual nature, battery of a sexual nature, or harassment which occurred while the...
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...lies in your hand” (Dyer). Since the beginning of wars men have been terrified of dyeing, and subjected to horrific scenes of devastation. This constant mental and physical stress can lead to numerous lasting complications in combat veterans. In 1678 Swiss military physicians finally identified the unusual behaviors among their combat veterans and gave it the medical name “Nostalgia” (Bentley). Since that time many militaries around the world have been studying the effects of war on their troops. It was not till the Civil war that the US first took an active approach to handling those afflicted with the disorder. In his article Bentley wrote, “During the Civil War the psychological symptoms from war became so common, field commanders as well as medical doctors pleaded with the War Department to provide some type of screening to eliminate recruit susceptible to psychiatric breakdown.” The first military hospitals were finally opened in 1863 to deal with the large numbers of mental breaks caused by the war. The US finally gave this condition a name after WWI. They believed that the impact of the shells being used caused a concussion that disrupted the physiological of the brain, and therefore called the disorder, “shell shock” (Bentley). Freud also studied this phenomenon and came up with the theory of “War Neurosis.” This stated that the neurosis was brought on by the inner conflict between a soldier’s “war ego” and his “peace ego” (Freud). Since WWI this disorder...
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...Where many children all over the world merrily and freely live under the protection of the law, for others, this is a distant reality, they live in a world where they’re battling poverty, stripped of their childhood and basic human rights are expunged, they’re the innocent victims of conflict, and war is made to seem their one and only duty, not to mention that these are children no more than 10 years of age. The United Nations defines a child soldier as, “Any person under 18 years of age who is part of any kind of regular or irregular armed force or armed group in any capacity.” Since the past 15 years, child soldiers are being used used in almost every region of the world. Unlike most children, who go to school, they’re abducted from their...
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...stress disorder) I find it interesting that even though they are suffering they will not seek help. My question is why are most military troops less likely to seek help for PTSD? The mental health in our military troops is becoming more of a concern. It has been found that one in eight US soldiers returning home from either Iraq or Afghanistan has PTSD. The major problem occurring from this is soldier are for one reason or another not seeking any help for this issue. This problem has been going on for as long as there has been war. Fortunately our society is starting to understand the effects war has a a person and are paying more attention to this issue. It is important that our society pay more attention to this problem because their can be lasting negative effects if soldiers do not seek treatment. The short term effects of PTSD are sleeplessness, panic attacks, intense fear, nightmares, self destructive thoughts, and depression. The long term effects of PTSD are subsidence abuse, anger management issues, loneliness, and severe depression. In 2012 the military sent out a survey to military spouses and found out that over sixty percent of soldiers believed they have PTSD but will not seek help. The wives also provided explanations as to why they will not seek professional help for this problem. Some of the reasons are as listed. There are commanding officers that didn't think the soldier needed help for did not make the time readily available to seek help. Some soldiers are...
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...Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), the invisible wound, affects 11% of veterans of the war in Afghanistan and 20% of Iraqi war veterans (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder PTSD: A Growing Epidemic / Neuroscience and PTSD Treatments, 2009). The diagnosis of PTSD or the suspicion that one has PTSD alone does not label a combat veteran as violent. There may be other factors at play which could make the person a threat or that may play a role in a crime already committed such as emotional disorders or substance abuse. Violence such as abuse or assault with a deadly weapon taken in the context of war may be adaptive and appropriate because anger instincts are often difficult to reconcile into everyday life. If treated, post-9/11 combat veterans diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder typically are not dangerous and do not pose a...
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