“‘Irritable Heart’, Shell Shock, Battle Fatigue, and PTSD: The History of Combat Stress Reactions” Program at Historic Newcomer House

In 1996, the Office of the Inspector General Evaluation Report on the Management of Combat Stress Control in the Department of Defense noted that “Combat stress is not new”, its documentation “dat[ing] back to the Civil War.” Using data from that conflict, World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, psychiatrist and war historian Dr. Stephen A. Goldman will examine how evolving concepts and knowledge of combat-related stress led to the American Psychiatric Association’s milestone 1980 classification of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He will then discuss the ongoing revision of PTSD diagnostic criteria based on accumulating experience and research from subsequent wars, and the actual (as opposed to popularly believed) extent of PTSD among veterans, up to and including those who have served in Iraqi, Afghanistan, or both theaters.

About the Speaker: Stephen A. Goldman, M.D. is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, and the only physician to serve on the Abraham Lincoln Institute Board of Directors. His having treated and worked with those who have been in combat, ongoing comprehensive study of veterans that spans 160 years, and their ramifications are all exemplified in his groundbreaking book, One More War to Fight: Union Veterans’ Battle for Equality through Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the Lost Cause.