A Canadian soldier surveys the aftermath of the 1917 Battle of Passchendaele in Belgium. Hundreds of thousands of people who served in WWI survived with what would now be called post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder have been recorded for millennia, but it took more than a century for physicians to classify it as a disorder with a specific treatment.
The battles were over, but the soldiers still fought. Flashbacks, nightmares, and depression plagued them. Some slurred their speech. Others couldn’t concentrate. Haunted and fearful, the soldiers struggled with the ghosts of war.
Which war? If you guessed Vietnam, the U.S. Civil War, or even World War I, you’d be wrong. These soldiers’ symptoms were recorded not on paper charts, but on cuneiform tablets inscribed in Mesopotamia more than 3,000 years ago.
Back then, the ancient soldiers were assumed to have been hexed by ghosts. But if they were treated today, they would likely receive a formal psychiatric diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Although the diagnosis has its roots in combat, the medical community now recognizes that PTSD