War Was Always Hell

In reference to the many articles Psychiatric News has published about returning veterans with PTSD, I would like to share some of my experiences as a psychiatrist as well as a child of parents who survived World War II.

My first rotation as a psychiatry resident in 1975 was at the Cincinnati VA Hospital. I heard about what men had lived through in Vietnam and other conflicts. I was “analytically oriented” and couldn't fit the concept of trauma “changing” a person's personality structure. We thought that those kinds of symptoms were exaggerated. I cringe now as I write this.

Since then I have learned a few things (and continue to learn). My mother lived in the eastern London area during 1939 to 1945. My father was stationed in Burma from 1943 to 1945. My mother talked about her fears freely until she passed away in 1997. My father never talked about his experiences, and I didn't hear about what he had lived through during the war until after he died in 1975. Other family members have since told me that for the next few years after returning to England in 1945, he would scream in the middle of the night with his hands around my mother's neck. Until her death my mother would hide in the bathroom with the door closed whenever there was a nearby thunderstorm.

Looking back, I know that my father's indifference to life was a direct result of being a victim of atrocities he witnessed in the Burmese jungle. Maybe I really never knew my “real” father. He survived the war but was killed after carelessly driving his car into the path of a train.

In 1999 I spent the night at the house of my aunt and uncle in England. Around 2 a.m. I was awakened by my uncle's scream. At breakfast I asked my aunt if he was having a problem. “No, not really,” she replied. “He has been waking up every night like that since he came back from the war in 1945.” She added, “All of the men who came back from the war do that—it's normal.”

I'm a lot more humble now when I hear such stories from patients. I hope that my ability to better hear them allows me to be more helpful. I hope so.