Shell shocked! Supersonic blonde,
hyperphonic female with dark sunglasses on,
everyone is here
to see
her all girl rock band!
this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2025
194 points (99.0% liked)
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As a former soldier with combat PTSD trust me when i say today’s command isn’t compassionate either.
I saw a claim once that PTSD only really became a thing as a result of the increased tempo of modern warfare. Supposedly, prior to industrialization the fact that armies had to march on foot to get anywhere gave soldiers time to decompress in between battles. I don't quite fully agree, since you absolutely can be traumatized by a single event, but on the face of it experiencing multiple events in a short span certainly wouldn't help. shrugs
Eh, there have been historical accounts that go back as far as written military history going over warriors/soldiers heart, railway spine, shell shock, battle fatigue, combat stress, and war neurosis.
Inscriptions originating with the Assyrian Dynasty in Mesopotamia (1300-609 BC) record traumas suffered by soldiers who were called upon to fight every third year during their military service. Herodotus observed that Epizelus, an Athenian spear carrier, suffered what appeared to be psychological problems following the Marathon Wars in 490 BC. Appian of Alexandria (c. 95? – c. AD 165) described a legion veteran called Cestius Macedonicus who, when his town was under threat of capture by (the Emperor-to-be) Octavian, set fire to his house and burned himself within it. Plutarch’s Life of Marius speaks of Caius Marius’ behaviour who, when he found himself under severe stress towards the end of his life, suffering from night terrors, harassing dreams, excessive drinking and flashbacks to previous battles.
War has changed, but our physiological response to stress has been the same since prehistory. If anything is different about modern combat it's more than likely the increase in prolonged accumulation of traumatic brain injuries sustained from receiving and firing modern concussive munitions. Unfortunately we still don't know exactly how bad it is for someone's brain to fire something like a recoilless rifle, but we know it's not great.
Does a recoilless rifle cause more of a concussion? My understanding of them is that the only difference is that there's some give between the receiver and frame (probably not using the correct terms, but the bit that holds the shell when the bullet is fired can move relative to the bit that you hold on to to absorb the force).
Or is it because it's easier to sustain fire when you don't have to deal with recoil, so their brains deal with a higher volume of the same thing?
If I remember correctly it's from a combination of overpressure when the projectile initially fires and the under pressure that happens when the projectile leaves the barrel.
The main problem is that it's a shoulder fired weapon with a 10lb projectile. You can fire a Gustaf a couple times, but if you're doing more than a couple it's gonna bang you up.
Oh 10lb projectile, that makes sense, I thought you were talking about recoilless assault rifles. Yeah, any explosion that can move something that big wouldn't surprise me having negative effects on anyone close enough to feel it in their chest. Same goes for artillery, tank cannons, or those big naval guns. Even if they aren't holding them directly, they are going off pretty close to people operating them (actually I'm not sure about the naval ones, pretty sure they are fired by wire from the bridge or something but dunno if they still need people to load them or if that's all automated now).
I thought you were talking about recoilless assault rifles.
Ah, lol. I forgot that people had made somewhat functional recoilless in small arms.
Yeah, I was speaking mainly about the Gustaf gun which has been giving people tbi for nearly a hundred years now. It's basically the Browning M2 of the antitank world, but it gives you brain damage.
Still a super efficient weapons platform if you discount the brain damage, which like a hundred governments have agreed is a pretty cool idea.
There are a lot of contributing factors - paradoxically, some modern data suggests that keeping soldiers near the frontline during treatment for a combat stress reaction actually decreases the long-term development of PTSD. Something along the lines of that PTSD is caused, in part, by going from 0-100 and then back to 0.
WW1 was also particularly bad because lack of sleep contributes significantly to the development of PTSD in warzones, and in WW1, being posted on the trenches and getting shelled day and night, sleep was never guaranteed.
That makes sense. When drag was abused, completely disengaging from the abuser felt awful. Drag wanted to fight back and feel like the problem was resolved. Simply distancing dragself while the abuser still had the option to return and do more harm felt terrifying.
Explanation: In the past, PTSD was not necessarily well-known - while some of the symptoms were intermittently recognized by cultures throughout the years, there was never a particularly clear conception of PTSD like we have today, nor a united approach towards dealing with it. Things were particularly stark in WW1, as serious approaches towards mental health were beginning to emerge in modern states... just as officers sent mentally broken troops back into the trenches, or even executed them for daring to have breakdowns in the middle of a war.
By WW2, things were far from perfect (and things are honestly still pretty fucked today), but there was at least the recognition that PTSD was a serious condition that was not just some moral failing on a soldier's part. Unless you were Patton, but fuck Patton, that prick.
I heard it was just hard men making hard decisions!
Patton was further heard by war correspondent Noel Monks angrily claiming that shell shock is "an invention of the Jews."
Oh good grief.
Yeah...... It's always weird to see a man so clearly from a different era in modern combat. It kinda makes sense that he would think you slap the PTSD out of a man, it was probably the recommended treatment when he first joined. I mean when he started his career, just traveling in a motorized vehicle was like the peak of military tech.
I think the key distinction is that generally they didn't (often don't) care. Military is about results. Results from the individual or unit and for the organization, group, or nation. Mental health doesn't even enter the picture.
Edit: also, I think for a very long time even after medical science on PTSD became more clear, the response was more "get fucked" and not "my bad"
(I know I'm taking a meme too literally. Good meme, I was amused)
Did you know that between 2013-2022, 36% of active duty US military deaths were from suicide?
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Not sure how that relates to my point
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PTSD has very real consequences but I'm not sure the suicide rate itself is that strongly correlated (if anything I suspect that high percent is because fewer died in active conflict and a higher percent of military personnel aren't front line combat) : https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165178123001336
It relates because PTSD is a really serious thing and, like you said, mental health is not a concern for the people in charge. I'm agreeing with you.
Is this the whole paper or is there a link I'm missing to read more? It doesn't seem to disagree that military involvement increases suicide rates:
U.S. Army annual suicide rates for males generally paralleled trends in the civilian population, but did so in a more dramatic fashion.
FWIW the 36% didn't come from nowhere, I used the data available on the OSD website. I started looking into the suicide rates of other professions but the CDC breaks it down in a different way (per 100k, not total deaths) and I lost interest while trying to convert it. Either way, 1/3 of deaths being suicide is a lot.
You can’t technically have PTSD if the trauma never actually ends. Which was arguably the human condition throughout much of history.
Chronic traumatic stress disorder has been well studied for years in gaza.
There is this very informative graphic based on a 15 year going study that details the stages of trauma and there relation to real documented and continued attacks.
If anyone has this graphic i mean, please post it. I cant Find it anywhere.
I find it very hard to blame a now young adult in gaza for Joining radical extremist if for their entire live those extremist have been the only ones seemingly standing up to the killers that took more then half their family and friends.
If anyone has this graphic i mean, please post it. I cant Find it anywhere.
This one?
Thats one, thanks!
Sidenote: i got media failed to load and apparently my instance didn't allow the size of this picture
Deducted from the upvoted that it must be my end and found it by lookin for your instance specifically but its sm to be be aware off on lemmy.