Borderline Insanity
A more specific word for this would be ‘shell shock’. This was a term coined in World War I to describe the type of PTSD many soldiers were afflicted with during war. At that time it was mostly a reaction to the severity of the many bombardments and fighting that consequently caused a sort of helplessness in terms of panic, their ‘fight or flight’ instinct and also the inability to reason, think and sleep properly.
‘Shell- shock’ as a term is still used in the US to describe certain parts of PTSD that is otherwise not accurate enough but this has been identified as the ‘signature injury of war’.
Back then, doctors diagnosed almost 10,000 Canadians with shellshock during the war. Medical treatment ranged from the gentle to the cruel. Techniques of talking and physical therapy helped many victims, while more extreme methods involved electric shock therapy. During the latter, patients were electrocuted in the hope of stimulating paralyzed nerves, vocal cords, or limbs. Shock therapy was more effective in returning soldiers to the front, with about two-thirds of all patients returning to war. It is unknown how many relapsed when they re-entered combat.
Doctors knew very little of what we now term PTSD, and there were few treatment programs after the war for returned soldiers who suffered from the mental trauma caused by war.
This condition affected both their physical and mental health. 2015 research by Johns Hopkins University has found that the brain tissue of soldiers who have been exposed to improvised explosive devices exhibit a pattern of injury in the areas responsible for decision making, memory, and reasoning. Mentally, it’s the obvious.
Some men suffering from shell shock were even put on trial, and even executed, for military crimes including desertion and cowardice. It is clear that mental health was not a ‘thing’ back then; this was mostly because of lack of knowledge and survival instincts. They believed you have to be killed to die, but today we all know the damages your mind can do.
Shell shock has had a profound impact inBritish culture and the popular memory of World War I. Poets such as Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen later on dealt with shell shock in their own works, which was very popular in the days.
Although the term “shell shocked” is typically used in discussion of WWI to describe early forms of PTSD, its high impact is now dealt with, with high technology. Compared to back then, our technology is more advanced. We have a lot more solutions and ways to deal with such an issue. In a world, where human rights are aggressively fought for, if there is a war today, right now, will our soldiers be given the necessary care and attention so as to prevent this ‘borderline insanity’?
