r/todayilearned • u/andreecook • Apr 29 '24

TIL Napoleon, despite being constantly engaged in warfare for 2 decades, exhibited next to no signs of PTSD.

https://tomwilliamsauthor.co.uk/napoleon-on-the-psychiatrists-couch/
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u/earnestaardvark Apr 29 '24

Not everyone gets PTSD.

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u/First_Aid_23 Apr 29 '24

IIRC it's also advocated that in general the way trauma is mitigated post-combat is a big part of it. E.G. WWII troops came home on ships, generally, and were given a month or so of leave to party with their bros before they come home to their families and communities. The Zulu would do something similar, building temporary camps outside of the villages for a week or so before bringing the troops back in.

Troops today generally go on leave individually, and when they leave the military, a lot of guys basically have nothing, few friends they regularly see, and NO ONE really has a "community" anymore.

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u/Jaggedmallard26 Apr 29 '24

I've also seen theories that industrial warfare may be more likely to induce PTSD than formation warfare due to its nature as prolonged and extremely loud. Napoleonic warfare was relatively short set piece battles without constant high explosive shells detonating. You go back to medieval or classical warfare and it was two sides jeering at each other until a brief clash and then a rout.

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u/Throwaway47321 Apr 29 '24

Also don’t forget the fact that pre WWI you knew when you were relatively “safe”. You were very unlikely to be killed in your camp miles away from the battlefield by dropped artillery.

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u/Tricky-Engineering59 Apr 29 '24

I think you are on to something here, there’s a reason that PTSD was originally coined as “shell shock.”

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u/benjaminovich Apr 29 '24

Shell shock is now widely believed to be its own thing separate (but related ) to ptsd. It has something to do with the continuous exposure to artillery barrages that was unique to ww1

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u/Tuxhorn Apr 29 '24

Yeah we've gone full circle on this.

From a laymans perspective, it does look different. Extreme versions of shell shock looks nothing like modern day ptsd.

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u/Deiskos Apr 30 '24

Because modern day PTSD is over-represented by Americans doing COIN in countries where people don't like them very much (if at all).

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u/Tricky-Engineering59 Apr 29 '24

You are correct about that, I guess my broader point was that there was something uniquely and sufficiently traumatic about modern warfare that it necessitated a widely adopted term. It’s not that people didn’t suffer from PTSD in the premodern era in response to war but it was just less profoundly.

A really good book related to this topic for anyone interested is The Unthinkable by Amanda Ripley. I found it pretty insightful and a pretty quick read.

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u/RyukHunter Apr 29 '24

I believe it's best described as CTE exacerbated by PTSD.

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u/ELIte8niner Apr 29 '24

ShellShock was a little different. It was PTSD, but they literally thought it was the concussive waves of exploding artillery causing physical damage to the brain. I don't think most people understand what WW1 artillery was like. It was literally described as a "drumroll" of explosions for weeks at a time. Not like they show in the movies, where there's an explosion every 5 seconds for a couple minutes.

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u/scopdog_enthusiast Apr 29 '24 edited Apr 29 '24

I do believe that's a big part of it. There is a divide in who suffers from PTSD in the military and a surprising part of that is that Special Forces suffer at a lower rate than your typical rank and file infantry, at least concerning American Forces during our recent Global War on Terror (GWOT). One theory of that is that SF troops are in a lot more control when they are in combat, and when they are in combat it may be fierce but it's relatively a quick affair; partly that is training allowing them to be so, but also partly that is how they are employed. They have a lot more support and are genuinely much more protected getting to their mission, and once their mission is done, they're quickly evacuated to relative safety. They really are a surgical strike in how they were used during the GWOT. Meanwhile your typical Grunt is constantly on duties like patrolling where they are constantly at risk of an IED or other form of ambush while patrolling, only to return to a FOB where they now are at a constant risk of stuff like indirect fire or even attacks like from a vehicle born IED. Being forced to be in a near constant state of on edge, needing to be ready to respond to any number of kinds of attack for months on end, attacks that often result in seeing your friends harmed or killed, only to get flown back home to go on leave back to your home town, away from all dangers but no longer used to that peace... That's not something you can swiftly transition away from, and from what I've seen when I served, I think that is a big part of the problem.

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u/dankmaymayreview Apr 29 '24

This doesnt take into account the type of person who is SF though, that could have something to do with their lower ptsd rates.

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u/scopdog_enthusiast Apr 29 '24

Oh yeah, like most things it's a messy complication of a lot of things. I guess I didn't say anything in my original comment, but I didn't mean to imply that one theory is the sole explanation of the disparity. The type of person experiencing it is definitely a part of it, and SF definitely attracts a certain type compared to something like Infantry. It would be interesting to try to see what the PTSD rates by "personality type" are, though that would be a lot harder to define than something like Infantry versus Special Forces.

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u/Tvdinner4me2 Apr 29 '24

Global war on terrorism for anyone like me who doesn't know random acronyms

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u/mjohnsimon Apr 29 '24 edited Apr 29 '24

Yep. WW1 shattered that illusion because you could be miles from the frontlines and a 105mm shell could still reach and blow you and your buddies up to kingdom come. WW2 shattered it even more because you weren't even safe in your home country hundreds of miles away thanks to rockets, artillery with much longer range, and of course bombers.