Mental Illness and POWs

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Recommended: Effective rehabilitation programs in prison

Any member of the Armed Forces who is held in captivity as a POW or as a hostage is more likely to be at a higher risk of mental illness like PTSD. This assumption goes against everything that was thought to be known during WWI, it was noted time and time again that both English and German POWs were somehow immune to war neuroses and only susceptible to the newly identified barbed wire disease which is the prisoner’s reaction to his environment during prison life. Interestingly though, up until this point in history no real data or studies had been complied on the post release effects after captivity. The repatriation of POWs and the new rehabilitation programs were designed to aid Armed Forces Service members to re-adapt back into to service life or if their enlisted was up to re-adapt back in to their former civilian lives. Disorders found in POWs were often explained in terms of a prewar predisposition to mental illness. Recent studies and those even conducted on the original WWI and later studies of POWs have discovered a higher rate of PTSD among veterans.

The former POW who escaped or was released by their captors is also a veteran of war, but also a veteran of experiences totally different from their typical veteran counterparts. The POWs battle was not only one of daily survival, but also never ending battle against psychological intimidation, physical suffering, boredom, degradation, feelings of vulnerability, and sometimes depression. Also another noteworthy effect from being a POW was the “hero” recognition by the public and or Military community upon their honorable return from their capture followed by the attention they would received in the years following the return. The reintegration process back in to “normal...

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...and their families, not all of the wounds are physical and they are not left behind in the cells upon return stateside. The Men who returned home from WWII were welcomed and more importantly celebrated by the entire nation as a whole, yet the efforts of those who returned home from Vietnam War did not reverberate as strongly within the country. The Vietnam POW was lightheartedly honored by our government, but the greater American populist struggled to separate their own personnel beliefs on their discontent with the war and unfairly placed the blame on those who had returned home after doing only what had been asked of them. The then President Nixon briefly spoke during his State of the Union speech saying along the lines that, they returned with honor and we can be proud of our courageous POWs for that they came home with their heads high, and not on their knees.

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