TRAUMA & METAMORPHOSIS II: ART AND POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (PTSD) HISTORY OF PTSD There is documentation of PTSD in medical literature of the American Civil War (a similar disorder was called “Da Costa’s Syndrome”). Soldiers in our Civil War who developed PTSD were said to have “soldier’s heart” or “nostalgia.” Freud’s pupil Kardiner was the first to describe the symptoms that came to be known as PTSD in the scientific community. But the first to “specifically diagnose mental disease as a result of war stress and try to treat it” were the Russians during the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-1905. In World War I, PTSD was called shell shock. It was named by medical officer Charles Myers, as it was initially believed to be a physical injury to the nerves due to close proximity to bombs, etc. The symptoms included sympathy pains (seeing/inflicting a gruesome face injury resulted in a person developing tics in their own faces, for example). During World War II it came to be known as battle fatigue. Throughout both world wars, developing knowledge of the condition, its causes and treatments was slight at best and fraught with misunderstanding. Both the military command and medical professionals were highly skeptical of it, to put it mildly. Military leaders felt that a soldier’s first battle should “steel the combatants against any ‘future stresses’”. Civilians, leaders and doctors could neither understand nor sympathize with those suffering, and believed combat stress reaction (the military’s term for PTSD) was due to the sufferer’s weakness and/or cowardice. PTSD was brought to the world’s attention as a legitimate disorder only after Vietnam veterans vocally insisted on the condition’s recognition. The veterans’ success can mostly be seen in the disorder’s addition to the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)...and the reason that PTSD is mostly associated with them. For years, it was actually called “Post-Vietnam Syndrome.” It is this inclusion in the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM that brought the research and recognition of medical professionals that allows them to successfully diagnose and help treat those suffering from PTSD.		TEACHER PACKET CONTENTS What PTSD Is History of PTSD Whom to Contact For Help or More Information For Further Reading Gallery Activities Bibliography