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Mental health
Published in Ian Greaves, Military Medicine in Iraq and Afghanistan, 2018
The period immediately following exposure to a distressing operational or combat event could theoretically represent an opportunity to offer support and in particular to provide assistance to those suffering from acute combat stress reaction or other persistent psychological symptoms. Preventing symptom chronicity is arguably the most important component of any early intervention. In recent decades, a number of early interventions have been proposed and tested; critical incident stress debriefing (CISD), sometimes known as psychological debriefing (PD), is an example of structured post-incident support; however, this intervention has not fared well when subjected to empirical testing. A Cochrane database review published in 200285 and subsequent studies suggested that early intervention of this kind not only fails to prevent psychological injury86 but actually makes things worse.87 Given CISD’s apparent lack of effectiveness and the potential to cause harm for some, the PD approach was proscribed in the UK military in 2006.
War and Madness
Published in Petteri Pietikainen, Madness, 2015
War-related traumas became familiar to the medical community with the phen omenon of shell-shock during the Great War. However, the epidemic nervousness of soldiers was known before the twentieth-century world wars. During the Napoleonic wars of the early nineteenth century, a number of British soldiers were treated in a mental hospital for nervous breakdowns, and such breakdowns were also witnessed in the American Civil War (1861–5). During the conflict-ridden twentieth century, war-related psychiatric suffering had different names and diagnoses at different times. In World War I, the terms ‘shell-shock’, ‘traumatic neurosis’ and ‘male hysteria’ were all common, while in World War II the term ‘war neurosis’ was widely employed. After the Vietnam War, ‘post-traumatic stress disorder’ became an official diagnosis (codified in DSM-III), and in the 2000s this term has been used interchangeably with ‘combat stress reaction’ or ‘combat fatigue’ (Pizarro, Silver & Prause 2006).
Caffeinism: History, Clinical Features, Diagnosis, and Treatment
Published in Barry D. Smith, Uma Gupta, B.S. Gupta, Caffeine and Activation Theory, 2006
Iulian Iancu, Ahikam Olmer, Rael D. Strous
We have previously proposed that caffeine may be related to combat stress reaction due to the large amount of caffeine ingested in war settings (Iancu, Dolberg, & Zohar, 1996). We had postulated that in addition to increasing anxiety, high caffeine intake would potentiate the anxiety-provoking effects of an exposure to a stressful situation, serving as a catalyst that causes the switch from an acute anxiety reaction to a more severe and debilitating reaction (acute stress disorder or posttraumatic stress disorder).
Adjustment profiles of Yom Kippur war veterans seeking delayed help from the IDF
Published in International Review of Psychiatry, 2019
Yael Shoval-Zuckerman, Rachel Dekel, Gad Cohen, Ofir Levi
The study population comprised Israel Defense Force (IDF) veterans who applied for treatment at the Combat Stress Reaction (CSR) Unit between the years 2006 and 2012 and for whom the Yom Kippur War was the main traumatic event of their lives. People who seek treatment at the CSR Unit are either veterans discharged from compulsory military service or reserve duty, or soldiers currently carrying out their reserve duty.
YaHaLOM: A Rapid Intervention for Acute Stress Reactions in High-Risk Occupations
Published in Military Behavioral Health, 2020
Vlad Svetlitzky, Moshe Farchi, Ariel Ben Yehuda, Amy B. Adler
In the U.S. military, Combat Stress Reaction (CSR) and Combat and Operational Stress Reaction (COSR; U.S. Department of Defense, 2013) are terms that essentially describe an ASR; however, in the case of CSR and COSR, these symptoms are specific to the military context (Department of Veterans Affairs and Department of Defense, 2017) and include functional impairment (e.g., Isserlin, Zerach, & Solomon, 2008).