Gulf War Syndrome: Is It Physiological, Or Psychological?
What is Gulf War Syndrome (GWS)? Is it a debilitating physical condition because of a secret use of chemical and biological warfare from the Iraqis? Is it post-traumatic stress disorder that resulted from the Gulf War? Nobody really knows the truth behind GWS, but many people have given their expertise and opinions on what, if anything caused GWS. In Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media, written by Elaine Showalter, she gives her account of GWS as “an epidemic of suspicion, a plague of paranoia that threatens a greater malaise than even Vietnam.” (143) It is true that GWS could be a case of paranoia or suspicion, but the physical symptoms and the transferring of symptoms from one person to the next just does not add up. It can be derived from evidence that GWS seems to be linked to chemical exposure.
This illness can be thought of as being caused two different ways, physiological and psychological. The physiological explanation makes no sense to me. It might be hard to believe that roughly 60,000 war veterans have this mysterious illness that causes many pains and defects to the body and it has not been identified by doctors or scientists. Doctors cannot seem to find anything wrong with these patients, except that some of the symptoms resemble post-traumatic stress disorder. Post-traumatic stress disorder places a tremendous amount of stress on the body, and it can cause physical ailments such as a rash, loss of sleep, or headaches. These symptoms resemble the symptoms of GWS.
In her discussion about GWS, Showalter really did not give any proof to back up her claim that it is a psychological ailment. She more or less made a joke out of the physiological aspect of the claim. It is hard to believe or take sides with a certain issue when the author offers no proof and mocks the opposing argument. Obviously, she cannot see the other side of the argument because she is a one-tracked mind type of person. She wrote a book about what she thinks is a series of hysterical illnesses that was caused by an affliction of the mind and is expressed through a disturbance of the body. I am not discounting all of her arguments, and I do believe the mind plays some role in this, and other types of illnesses, but the evidence is stacked against her in her discussion about Gulf War Syndrome.
There are two ma...
... middle of paper ...
...nment were at fault and GWS was caused by chemical alteration, the government would be liable and have some hefty compensation and medical bills to pay. This is reason enough for the government to declare GWS a psychological illness.
The main basis to Showalter’s argument is that tests or research that GWS is a physical illness linked to chemicals has not proved it. The American Medical Association has come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as GWS.(26) On the other hand, the British Medical Journal has said that GWS is linked to chemical weapons. Also, the British Medical Journal criticizes the research done by the White House and the Pentagon, which says that chemical exposure played no part in the symptoms.(126) Elaine Showalter doesn’t mention any of this is her argument.
It is obvious that Gulf War Syndrome is for real. The government and Elaine Showalter claim that nothing is really known about GWS. They both classify it as PTSD, and Elaine Showalter writes about it as a hysterical ailment. It just doesn’t seem right to me that Showalter thinks that 60,000 of our finest troops and countless numbers of their wives and doctors are just a bunch of hysterical people.
The Vietnam War caused many U.S. soldiers to develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, so when is the war over, is it really over? For soldiers with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD, the war may not ever be over. Doctors are on the peak of finding treatments for the ones affected by PTSD and how to prevent it from occurring or even helping them to recover from PTSD has major affects on Vietnam soldiers, their family members and today’s society.
Metaphoric Illness also contributes to our fears. One huge issue of the 1990's was GWS, Gulf War Syndrome. The media depicted sick veterans in wheel chairs or beside their deformed children (pg.156) to show us what effect GWS has on its victims. The New England Journal of Medicine did a study comparing 33,998 infants born to Gulf War veterans and 41,463 babies of other military personnel and finding no evidence of an increase in the risk of birth effects for children of Gulf War veterans (pg.157). This has been such an over exaggerated problem and because of this thousands of Gulf War veterans have undergone countless medical exams, rather than going to get the much needed counseling. The real illness is the fear, anxiety and hopelessness of the veterans; these may explain their "health" problems.
"That night, Beowulf and his men stay inside Herot. While his men sleep, Beowulf lies awake, eager to meet with Grendel" (Raffel Burton- 48). In the epic, Beowulf establishes himself as a highly profitable warrior, on a mission to serve and protect. Immediately, Beowulf is presumed to be a good force, taking on Grendel who is perceived to be a descendant of Cain, who personifies evil. A valiant warrior, Beowulf protests that he shall take on the monster, stripped of weapons and armor. When the evil monster Grendel attacked the people of Herot, Beowulf chose to fight Grendel and diminish the evil that he represents. While he and his men sleep, Grendel arrives to wreak havoc on the mead-hall.
The portrayal of people being sickly creatures has been used in Hollywood film for a very long time. This has been in the endeavor of putting the viewing public in the shoes of the patient and entertain them with over the top portrayals of disease. For patients that are women in particular this has been achieved by defining them along the lines of vague terms such as them being over emotional and unstable. Despite the advancement experienced by the society, women have not yet fully seen the goal of equality realize fruition. With the expansion of the psychiatric and psychological terminologies, there now additional ways via which mental illness can be ascribed as a weakness for men and women portrayed in Hollywood film. This is best exemplified by the key character in the film Girl Interrupted. In this film, the key character, a woman, is given these labels sourced from psychiatric terminologies. As such, throughout life, she has the difficult task of endeavoring to shed off these forced identities and try to find her own identity. These life struggles are brought on when she was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. With this diagnosis, she earns a year-long stay in a prescribed mental institution. Her dream is to become a writer. With her new found diagnosis, however, the probability of her realizing her dream dims. In reality this would only magnified in a 1960 society, where someone suffering from such an ailment would as a woman have even fewer chances of success.
In the interview with Moche and the interviewee, the questions they asked one another had a positive impact on how they interacted. At the beginning of the interview, both Moche and the interviewer seemed interested in assisting each other in acquiring the correct information from one another. When the interviewer asked about his name and how to spell it displayed that he was concerned about getting the correct information from Mr. Moche (Moche 0:34). This is crucial because it demonstrates that the interviewer
Imagine living in despair after coming back home, dismayed from a war that got no appreciation. Robert Kroger once said in his quote, “The brave men and women, who serve their country and as a result, live constantly with the war inside them, exist in a world of chaos. But the turmoil they experience isn’t who they are, the PTSD invades their minds and bodies.” Eleven percent of Vietnam Veterans still suffer with symptoms of the terrifying disorder of PTSD (Handwerk). Vietnam Veterans struggle with the physiological effects of PTSD after war, which leads to despair and many deaths.
The website My PTSD (2013) explores the history of PTSD experienced by soldiers. While this illness was not known until 1980 as PTSD, the symptoms of the disease can be traced back to warriors in the battlefield 1000BC. Prior of being called PTSD this disorder was identified with various names just within the last century. These names included: War Hysteria, Stress Response Syndrome, Vietnam Veterans Syndrome, DaCosta’s Syndrome, Shell Shock, War Neurosis, Combat Stress Reaction, Traumatic & Fright Neuroses, and many others. Much of the PTSD development was influenced by WWI and WWII veterans’ response to stress. The effects of the illness were identified by the fixation on traumatic events as well as functional limitations (My PTSD). While anybody experiencing a trauma can become a victim of PTSD,...
The veterans were majorly affected by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder because they watched their comrades die right in front of them and had flashbacks of when their comrades fell. PTSD affects the brain of the soldiers that witnessed traumatic events(The VVA Veterans, web). They can have invasive memories. They can also end up with seizures. The seizures will come with a lot of anxiety or stress related from war memories. The seizures would come into play when they are having an anxiety attack or the memories. The doctors did not know how to stop the seizures at first till a year later from the soldiers being home or the doctors wouldnt diagnose the soldiers with them.
Since the Great War, the war poem has developed into an instrument of political dissent and an earnest request for understanding on behalf of the soldiers forced or duped into fighting war. During the two World Wars, soldiers suffered from "survivor's guilt" for remaining alive while others died. “Shell shock” was a term formulated to express the reaction of some soldiers in World War I to the trauma of war.The term "post-traumatic stress disorder" was introduced in the 1970s after the diagnoses of US military veterans of the Vietnam War.Most researchers have done clinical study of
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.
Rosen’s study, focused on the root cause of PTSD, showed that stress (major anxiety or nightmares) shown by soldiers before sent into deployment lessened or deliquesced in 13% of soldiers (Herbert 2). Additionally, those that did develop severe PTSD had suffered emotional problems prior to deploy-ment—especially child-hood abuse or exposure to violence.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, also known as PTSD, is an anxiety disorder that can develop after a traumatic event (Riley). A more in depth definition of the disorder is given by Doctor’s Nancy Piotrowski and Lillian Range, “A maladaptive condition resulting from exposure to events beyond the realm of normal human experience and characterized by persistent difficulties involving emotional numbing, intense fear, helplessness, horror, re-experiencing of trauma, avoidance, and arousal.” People who suffer from this disease have been a part of or seen an upsetting event that haunts them after the event, and sometimes the rest of their lives. There are nicknames for this disorder such as “shell shock”, “combat neurosis”, and “battle fatigue” (Piotrowski and Range). “Battle fatigue” and “combat neurosis” refer to soldiers who have been overseas and seen disturbing scenes that cause them anxiety they will continue to have when they remember their time spent in war. It is common for a lot of soldiers to be diagnosed with PTSD when returning from battle. Throughout the history of wars American soldiers have been involved in, each war had a different nickname for what is now PTSD (Pitman et al. 769). At first, PTSD was recognized and diagnosed as a personality disorder until after the Vietnam Veterans brought more attention to the disorder, and in 1980 it became a recognized anxiety disorder (Piotrowski and Range). There is not one lone cause of PTSD, and symptoms can vary from hallucinations to detachment of friends and family, making a diagnosis more difficult than normal. To treat and in hopes to prevent those who have this disorder, the doctor may suggest different types of therapy and also prescribe medication to help subside the sympt...
In a typical revenge tragedy, a hero is called upon by the ghost of a family member to avenge his death ("Revenge Tragedy"). Hamlet is the main protagonist and hero called upon by his father's ghost to "revenge his foul and most unnatural murder" (1.5.31). When Hamlet first hears that his father was murdered, he exclaims, "Haste me to know't, that I, with wings as swift...may sweep to my revenge" (1.5.35-37). He is hungry to avenge his father; however, Hamlet does nothing and at the end of Act II he scolds himself that "this player...could force his soul so to his own conceit...all for nothing...yet, [he]...can say nothing for a king upon whose property and most dear life a damned defeat was made" (2.2.578-598). Hamlet is upset that he hasn't yet acted to avenge his father, but some mere actor can build up so much emotion for nothing. Shakespeare complicates the plot because revenge tragedies are supposed to have a courageous and aggressive protagonist who swiftly carries out his deed of revenge; instead, Shakespeare modifies the hero and portrays Hamlet as an indecisive and contemplative man.
Beowulf’s first accomplishment as an epic hero was his battle with Grendel. Grendel was a huge beast, a descendent of Cain, who ruthlessly murdered innocent Danes because he felt pity for himself. Upon hearing of the Dane’s problem, Beowulf set off to help the Danish without having been called upon. Even though Beowulf had men backing him, He drew battle with Grendel alone and without armor or weapons. Yet, Beowulf emerged victorious with the arm of Grendel as his trophy. Beowulf then went on to kill Grendel’s vengeful mother and a huge fire-breathing dragon who thought it had been done wrong by the Geats. Alas, the killing of the dragon would be Beowulf’s last great battle for the dragon took Beowulf’s life in the struggle for his own.
According to Gary Phillips, School culture is “beliefs ,attitudes and behaviors that characterize a school in terms of how people treat and feel about each other , the extent to which feel included and appreciated and rituals and traditions reflecting collaboration and collegiality”.