Vietnam War & Health and Medicine (VI). Mental Disorders. The Vietnam War had a negative impact on the soldiers due to the mental, social, and physical problems they had encountered during and after the war. The soldiers who were in Vietnam experienced many things that a normal person could not handle or comprehend. After the war a great deal of the soldiers had developed a war syndrome. C.B. Scringer states, “Battles inflame thoughts of imminent death or impending injury, so the trauma of war becomes firmly embedded into one's consciousness. At first many doctors did not really understand the concept of a war syndrome and diagnosed the soldiers with common characteristics such as fatigue, shortness of breath, headaches, sleep... “A handful of veterans meet on Fridays at the Veterans Affairs clinic in Hempfield to talk about the Vietnam War. Anne Merical, a licensed clinical social worker, listens. When they came home, they had nothing to identify what was going on with them, as far as nightmares, anger, hyper-vigilance, addictions, triggers for flashbacks and relationship problems," she said. "Now they are talking for the first time about what they went through," wrote Maryann Gogniat Eidemiller in the April 22, 2010 issue of Post Gazette.com “The ones who did talk to civilian and VA psychiatrists years ago helped lead to the identification of the condition known as post-traumatic stress disorder and its inclusion in the American Psychiatric Association's 1980 edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illness,” Edimiller added. Post-traumatic stress disorder was in the news recently when Allan L. Kern, 44, of New Alexandria, filed suit against Westmoreland County after being fired as a correctional officer at the Westmoreland County Prison because he did not wish to directly deal with prisoners. Post-traumatic stress disorder is not new. It was called Da Costa's Syndrome, soldier's heart and cardiac neurosis in the Civil War, shell shock in World War I and war neurosis in World War II. “Based on the psychiatric needs of World War II veterans, the VA developed a system of statistics that became the foundation for the first Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illness, published in 1952. It was used to diagnose Korean War veterans with "gross stress reaction", renamed post-traumatic stress disorder in the 1980 revision and also applied to non-combat trauma,” said Eidemille. Treatment for the disorder includes medication, individual or group therapy, or a combination. "Cognitive behavioural therapy is one treatment, and the VA also uses exposure therapy and exposure therapy using virtual reality with specific video war games," Ms. Merical said, adding: "We also use narrative therapy, which is the telling and retelling of the story to reduce anxiety." Other options are imagery rehearsal and eye movement desensitisation therapy, which some believe reprocesses thinking patterns. Dr VanEstenberg and Mr Johns, a licensed professional counselor, have treated military post-traumatic stress disorder as though it were withdrawal from adrenaline addiction. "They go from a state of being hyper-vigilant and constantly on their guard, then they come back to a mundane world," Dr VanEstenberg said. "Then you see them becoming engaged in more risk-taking behaviors like drinking, drug use, excess speed in cars and motorcycles. There may be relationship problems, like violence, when the behaviour is misdirected and uncontained. There are a lot of employment issues, too." Dr VanEstenberg has seen veterans benefit from augmenting therapy with the discipline of martial arts and the calming effects of meditation and prayer. Soldiers usually live in a state of elevated adrenaline, and when they return home, their bodies have to adapt. Then there is re-entry shock from both sides. "When you leave the war zone, there's grief and guilt and traumatic bereavement over things you did that, in the heat of the moment, seemed correct. When you go back with your own family, the guilt rises and grief hits," Mr Johns explained, noting a distinction between acute combat post-traumatic stress disorder and chronic post-traumatic stress disorder rooted in childhood trauma, which can compound combat trauma. The long-term health outcomes of women's service during the Vietnam Era were investigated by a team of researchers from Veteran Affairs Department led by Dr Han Kang. This is the most comprehensive study to date of the mental and physical health of women Vietnam Veterans. It estimated the prevalence of PTSD and other mental and physical health conditions in these women, and examined the relationship between PTSD and other conditions. Researchers studied approximately 10,000 women who served in the military during the Vietnam War, including those who served in Vietnam, those who served near Vietnam, and those who served in the US. This study included four research phases conducted over a 5-year period: one year of cohort development, two years of mail survey and telephone interview administration, one year of medical record abstraction, and one year of data analysis. The study was also used to shape future research on women Veterans, and to plan for appropriate services for women Veterans and the aging Veteran population. It is being co-ordinated by VA's Co-operative Studies Programme and involves researchers from across the country. More information about this study is available on the Vietnam-Era Women Veterans Study Web page. Dear Egyptian Mail readers, Your comments and/or contributions are welcome. We promise to publish whatever is deemed publishable at the end of each series of [email protected]
