George Carlin on American euphemisms..

[Magical Realist]

Hits the nail right on the head!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSp8IyaKCs0

[C C]

In the First World War that condition was called shell shock. Simple honest direct language two syllables. Shell-shocked almost sounds like the guns themselves. That was 70 years ago. [...] then we had the war in Korea 1950 ... and the very same combat condition was called operational exhaustion... [...] Then of course came the war in Vietnam [...] thanks to the lies and deceits surrounding that war, I guess it's no surprise that the very same condition was called post-traumatic stress disorder. [...] The pain is completely buried under jargon. [...] Betcha if we'd have still been calling this shell-shocked some of those Vietnam veterans might have gotten the attention they needed at the time.

I'm not sure the "shell shock" label would have made much difference (i.e., they wanted to diminish the seriousness of it back in WWI, too). There seem to be other effects of war that contribute other than being bombarded by explosions (though that was surely the chief one back then). So PTSD might actually embrace more things than what "operational exhaustion" superficially implied -- the latter Korean War term truly sounding as if it was belittling the condition as nothing more than a weakness of mind or mere fatigue.

Shell shock: At the Battle of the Somme in 1916, as many as 40% of casualties were shell-shocked, resulting in concern about an epidemic of psychiatric casualties, which could not be afforded in either military or financial terms.

Among the consequences of this were an increasing official preference for the psychological interpretation of shell shock, and a deliberate attempt to avoid the medicalisation of shell shock. If men were 'uninjured' it was easier to return them to the front to continue fighting.

Another consequence was an increasing amount of time and effort devoted to understanding and treating shell shock symptoms. Soldiers who returned with shell shock generally could not remember much because their brain would shut out all the traumatic memories.

[...] During 1917, "shell shock" was entirely banned as a diagnosis in the British Army, and mentions of it were censored, even in medical journals.

[Zinjanthropos]

How much of shell shock was the direct result of being concussed by the blast of an exploding shell/bomb? There are no real figures from WWI but found this from Smithsonianmag.com

The official Report of the War Office Committee of Enquiry Into “Shell-Shock” made at war’s end gravely concluded that “shell-shock resolves itself into two categories: (1) Concussion or commotional shock; and (2) Emotional shock” and of these “It was given in evidence that the victims of concussion shock, following a shell burst, formed a relatively small proportion (5 to 10 per cent).” The evidence about damage from “concussion shock” was largely anecdotal, based heavily upon the observations of senior officers in the field, many of whom, veterans of earlier wars, were clearly skeptical of any newfangled attempt to explain what, to their mind, was simple loss of nerve: “New divisions often got ‘shell shock’ because they imagined it was the proper thing in European warfare,” Maj. Pritchard Taylor, a much-decorated officer, observed. On the other hand, a consultant in neuropsychiatry to the American Expeditionary Force reported a much higher percentage of concussion shock: 50 percent to 60 percent of shell shock cases at his base hospital stated they had “lost consciousness or memory after having been blown over by a shell.” Unfortunately, information about the circumstances of such injuries was highly haphazard. In theory, medical officers were instructed to state on a patient’s casualty form whether he had been close to an exploding shell, but in the messy, frantic practice of processing multiple casualties at hard-pressed field stations, this all-important detail was usually omitted.

Too close to a blast might turn your organs into pulp so why wouldn’t those who survived a nearby blast concussion wave not have suffered brain injury?

[Magical Realist]

https://theconversation.com/from-shell-s...auma-74911

"In the wake of World War I, some veterans returned wounded, but not with obvious physical injuries. Instead, their symptoms were similar to those that had previously been associated with hysterical women – most commonly amnesia, or some kind of paralysis or inability to communicate with no clear physical cause.

English physician Charles Myers, who wrote the first paper on “shell-shock” in 1915, theorized that these symptoms actually did stem from a physical injury. He posited that repetitive exposure to concussive blasts caused brain trauma that resulted in this strange grouping of symptoms. But once put to the test, his hypothesis didn’t hold up. There were plenty of veterans who had not been exposed to the concussive blasts of trench warfare, for example, who were still experiencing the symptoms of shell-shock. (And certainly not all veterans who had seen this kind of battle returned with symptoms.)

We now know that what these combat veterans were facing was likely what today we call post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. We are now better able to recognize it, and treatments have certainly advanced, but we still don’t have a full understanding of just what PTSD is.

The medical community and society at large are accustomed to looking for the most simple cause and cure for any given ailment. This results in a system where symptoms are discovered and cataloged and then matched with therapies that will alleviate them. Though this method works in many cases, for the past 100 years, PTSD has been resisting."

[confused2]

Maybe people need to build up to traumatic things gradually. Starting with a big bang and ppl blown to bits possibly too much too soon.

[Magical Realist]

I entered the Navy as an electronics technician and was fortunately never exposed to a battle situation. I did stand gate guard watch a few times and holstered a firearm, but nothing traumatizing ever occurred. I sympathize greatly with ptsd survivors. I would probably have suffered the same affliction as them had I been in combat. As it stands, the most traumatizing event in my life so far was getting my truck stolen back in 1999. I still have dreams of looking for it to this very day.

[confused2]

Post stolen truck disorder.