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Comment by mcpackieh | Hacker News Reader

"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.

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Shell shock is just the outdated term for what we now recognize as combat-induced PTSD.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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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