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Comment by zer8k | Hacker News Reader

It's been around a lot longer. We've called it Shell Shock, War Neurosis, Battle Fatigue and several other things. It's well documented. PTSD, imo, is just another layer of indirection when referring to trauma. It's name provides significantly less meaning than something like "shell shock" which gets right to the point of the matter. PTSD was certainly appreciated. Patton famously got a reaming from Eisenhower for how he treated shell shocked troops during the war.

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PTSD is more than a layer of indirection, it’s a bed for the current direction of research focused on trauma. Shell shock isn’t a good term for home abuse for example, but the current dogma is that similar neurological mechanisms underly these different kinds of trauma, thus joining them all under the term PTSD.

The benefit of this umbrella term is, or course, contingent on there actually existing such a universal neurological pattern of PTSD, which I don’t think can yet be decisively established.

George Carlin's take on the words:

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

"Shell shock" becomes a euphemism when you're talking about people traumatized by something other than artillery. PTSD is more general, and therefore more precise in the general case.

Euphemism means using softer words. Getting shellshock from a machine gun is not an euphemism

The context of this conversation is people who were traumatized by an atomic bomb. I think atomic bomb to artillery qualifies as such a softening.

And Post Traumatic STRESS Disorder isn't?

You got an atomic bomb dropped on you, experienced a literal apocalyptic sun consuming everything you loved first hand and all you (impersonal) can come up with is "stress"?

If you want to stay coherent then we should have made up a term specifically to tackle the world-ending experiences these people lived through.

Having known a few people with (war-induced) PTSD, I think stress disorder is a good description of their outward symptoms. However I think your perspective is valid and can see why you think this sounds diminishing.

It’s not “stress disorder”, it’s “disorder”. As in: “(Post-(traumatic stress)) Disorder”. Disorder that follows traumatic stress.

Regardless, PTSD is a terrible term because it's non-descriptive. It also makes it more difficult for a person to be empathetic to a sufferer of PTSD because it's not an on/off switch and more of a spectrum. A term like "shell shock" illustrates the actual trauma and enables people to be understand better why a person might act the way they do. It is often easier for a person with PTSD to describe themselves as a "victim of X" or "experienced Y" because the term is so disconnected from actual meaning. It belongs in medical textbooks, certainly, but in spoken language it's worthless. A perfect example of jargon.

That doesn’t really make sense. A victim of x doesn’t necessarily get PTSD from that. PTSD describes a specific set of symptoms that can occur after experiencing a traumatic experience.

Personally I think “post traumatic stress disorder” is more descriptive and accurate than “shell shock”. The person isn’t shocked, they’re traumatized. Also it turns out different things can make sense to people in different ways. Probably the term is less important than the understanding.

> The person isn’t shocked, they’re traumatized.

The terms "in shock" and "shocked" are not equivalent. The former means traumatized, while the latter means someone is extremely surprised.

Shell shock is just the outdated term for what we now recognize as combat-induced PTSD. Before that it was deemed cowardice or malingering.

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