|
Shell shock was a term coined to describe the reaction of some soldiers in World War I to the trauma of battle. It was a reaction to the intensity of the bombardment and fighting that produced a helplessness appearing variously as panic and being scared, or flight, an inability to reason, sleep, walk or talk. During the War, the concept of shell shock was ill-defined. Cases of 'shell shock' could be interpreted as either a physical or psychological injury, or simply as a lack of moral fibre. While the term ''shell shock'' is no longer used in either medical or military discourse, it has entered into popular imagination and memory, and is often identified as the signature injury of the War. In World War II and thereafter, diagnosis of 'shell shock' was replaced by that of combat stress reaction, a similar but not identical response to the trauma of warfare and bombardment. ==Origin== During the early stages of World War I, soldiers from the British Expeditionary Force began to report medical symptoms after combat, including tinnitus, amnesia, headaches, dizziness, tremors, and hypersensitivity to noise. While these symptoms resembled those that would be expected after a physical wound to the brain, many of those reporting sick showed no signs of head wounds.〔Jones, Fear and Wessely 2007, p.1641〕 By December 1914 as many as 10% of British officers and 4% of enlisted men were suffering from "nervous and mental shock".〔McLeod, 2004〕 The term "shell shock" came into use to reflect an assumed link between the symptoms and the effects of explosions from artillery shells. The term was first published in 1915 in an article in ''The Lancet'' by Charles Myers. Some 60–80% of shell shock cases displayed acute neurasthenia, while 10% displayed what would now be termed symptoms of conversion disorder, including mutism and fugue.〔 The number of shell shock cases grew during 1915 and 1916 but it remained poorly understood medically and psychologically. Some doctors held the view that it was a result of hidden physical damage to the brain, with the shock waves from bursting shells creating a cerebral lesion that caused the symptoms and could potentially prove fatal. Another explanation was that shell shock resulted from poisoning by the carbon monoxide formed by explosions.〔Jones, Fear and Wessely 2007, p.1642〕 At the same time an alternative view developed describing shell shock as an emotional, rather than a physical, injury. Evidence for this point of view was provided by the fact that an increasing proportion of men suffering shell shock symptoms had not been exposed to artillery fire. Since the symptoms appeared in men who had no proximity to an exploding shell, the physical explanation was clearly unsatisfactory.〔 In spite of this evidence, the British Army continued to try to differentiate those whose symptoms followed explosive exposure from others. In 1915 the British Army in France was instructed that: However, it often proved difficult to identify which cases were which, as the information on whether a casualty had been close to a shell explosion or not was rarely provided.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Shell shock」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|