Instead, about 90 percent of cases were thought to be from total exhaustion, they were treated quickly, briefly, and nearest to the war front. The remaining 10 percent were considered true neuroses cases that were correctly diagnosed. In World War I the casualty rate of psychiatric casualties was on about one percent. Even up through World War II many of the countries involved still had a very strict criteria in letting physiological trauma be an acceptable excuse to leave war. But for the United States in World War II the percent of soldiers sent home was a lot more lenient and quadrupled their psychiatric casualty rate (Horowitz 33).
Since the Vietnam War, PTSD has been recognized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of psychotherapy (PTSD 2). PTSD is a product of history from a specific time and place that does not ever erase from your memory. The DSM-IV defines PTSD as the development of characteristic symptoms such as: persistent, re-experiencing, avoidance of associated traumatic event or events. Horowitz states, "Following exposure to an extreme traumatic stressor involving direct personal experience of actual or threatened death or serious injury, or other threat to one's physical integrity," (24). Common symptoms are feeling of intense fear, helplessness, loss of control, and threat of total destruction of ones existence. A survivor who actively participated in killing or committing violence are exceptionally traumatized, especially when committing these actions can not be "rationalized in terms of some higher value or meaning," (Wilner 44). Symptoms for PTSD have been found very similar to symptoms from the past diseases know as "shell shock" or "combat neuroses.".
In Ginzburg's essay, "The Son of a Man" She states, "It is useless to believe that we could recover from twenty years like those we have been through." The Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg, who survived World War II, expresses what she believes everyone feels who has been caught in a war (Hirschberg x).
