World War I was so shocking because the battles were so violent. People would fly by on planes or come by on tanks and shoot military remembers right in front of everyone. There was not always a set battle spot, and many bombings and shootings occurred in public sites. People constantly saw their companions being killed right in front of their eyes. Another aspect was the gassing, which caused millions of casualties. Survivors of gas attacks will always remember the people that died beside them, as will any survivors of the war.
Because there was so little awareness of PTSD, it became a huge problem because there was not really therapy to try to prevent, or help people who had PTSD from the war. Of course, since WWI, there has been a great improvement with knowledge about the trauma people experience when at war, which is certainly a reason that the conditions have improved since WWI.
What you said about the gas and other types of tramatic deaths leading to PTSD makes sense. However, there have been gruesome methods of torture and death from the origin of the human species. What made these deaths cause so much more trauma? Was it because of the sheer number of people dying, or was it something else?
ReplyDeleteYour definitely right about World War One's extreme level of violence. It was something the word hadn't experienced before and i agree that that had a lot to do with the outbreak of PTSD.
ReplyDeleteYou are right Emily, I should have addressed this idea more clearly. I think that the deaths were more traumatizing because they were so visible to people involved in the war, and happened right in front of people every day. Also, even if certain deaths themselves were not necessarily more traumatizing than a normal death, PTSD was still much more common because these deaths were happening in such a mass, globalized sense which had never been seen before.
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