Hacker News Reader

What? Shell shock is PTSD. The doctors were concerned about concussive trauma but investigated and ruled it out as the cause.

The concern itself was right to have, but I don't think the concern has ever gone away.

So I don't characterize that as very "right the first time".

View on HN

They were right as to the cause.

> the cause

Not at all. It might be a cause, but tons of PTSD has nothing to do with concussive trauma, so much so that the other cases overwhelmed the correlating cases when they investigated the causation.

I doubt they had the right technology back then to actually investigate for physical brain trauma. Even today CTE diagnoses are made post mortem. And one can end up with CTE without ever having a full blown concussion.

They had plenty of tech to figure out whether people were near explosions at all.

PTSD is a different thing from TBI/CTE, overlap or not. The diagnosis for PTSD was called shell shock. They did not have it right in a general sense.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com