Originally Posted by
dann
Quote:
However, as GWS affects approximately a quarter of subjects deployed, it is not very likely that all these symptoms are caused by a psychotraumatic reaction. Many veterans suffering from GWS have themselves rejected the diagnosis of PTSD, arguing that they do not suffer repetition nightmares...
Yet, scientific studies relating to GWS are struggling to establish opposition or continuity links between the objective external exposure (smoke from petrol wells, impoverished uranium, biological agents, chemicals) and the share of inner emotion albeit reactive and characterised by a subjective stress.
Not struggling any more...
The problem with situations like this is that symptoms can have a variety of causes, so it can be hard to identify a cause that is out of the ordinary. Soldiers have suffered from PTSD in all wars. In this case however, the unusually high incidence and symptom anomalies suggested something out of the ordinary
was responsible for a large proportion. Also - unlike some cases of mass psychosis - there were plenty of potential physical causes, one of which was itself out of the ordinary.
Ironical that one of the fears in the Iraq War was that Saddam might gas us, when in reality we had already done it to ourselves!