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Thursday, December 21, 2006 12:00 AM

Post-traumatic futility disorder

Disillusionment with war is an overlooked psychological liability on the battlefield, experts say -- and could lead to higher rates of PTSD among U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

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  • Thursday, December 21, 2006 10:41 AM

    Oh really, how do you know this KMR????

    This article helps to explain why perhaps the soldiers of that generation didn't have as many problems with PTSD.

    PTSD wasn't even named before Vietnam veterans came looking for treatment.

    So how could you POSSIBLY know that PTSD wasn't a problem for the people who served in WWII?

    When the WWII generation drank to excess and beat their wives, it was covered up by publications like Life Magazine. All of their angry and rage and family dysfunction was shoved in the background and made to seem somehow NORMAL.

    It wasn't until the feminists in the seventies came around poking into the topics of rape trauma and recovery that PTSD among war veterans became a matter visible to public discourse in the mass media.

    Prior to the seevnties, all the problems that typically are exhibited in disturbed veterans were just chalked up to normal masculinity or normal alcoholic acting out.

    You can see this clearly in the war movies of the period.

    It's fantasy that WWII didn't cause the same amount of trauma as other wars.

    The social repression of the fifties was partly a conspiracy to keep that fantasy alive.

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