24. Back When PTSD Was Poorly Understood
Today, it is widely accepted that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a mental malady caused by exposure to shocking events, such as the horrors of warfare. In World War I, what we now know as PTSD was known as shell shock – erroneously assumed to be caused by the blasts of exploding artillery shells – and was often accompanied by uncontrollable shaking and tics. Shell-shock was not well-understood by psychiatrists back then, and there was little sympathy for its sufferers who were often seen as cowardly, malingering, weak-willed soldiers.
Psychiatrists in Germany referred to shellshock sufferers as “Kriegs-Zitterer” (war tremblers) or “Kriegsneurotiker” (war neurotics). The shaking that often accompanied shellshock was seen as evidence of weakness and unmanliness. The era’s psychiatrists, and especially the German ones, strongly rejected the notion of giving any sort of benefit or payment to traumatized veterans. They attributed their suffering not to a medical cause, but to moral weakness. During the interwar years, they turned to a radical – and by then already controversial – idea to treat shellshock: electrocution.
