Modern Wars, Modern Ills

Nov. 12 -- WEDNESDAY, Nov. 11 (HealthDay News) -- The tragedy last week at Fort Hood, Texas, where an Army psychiatrist anticipating active duty has been blamed for killing 13 people and wounding 29 others in a shooting rampage, has sharpened the nation's focus not just on the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, but also on another casualty of war: soldiers' mental health.

The ruptures wrought by post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, certainly seem more pronounced in the present-day conflicts than in previous wars. But as the nation pauses to honor its soldiers past and present this Veterans Day, experts are unclear whether there is an actual increase in PTSD or just a perception of increase due to more awareness about the condition.

Still, soldiers battling on today's front lines confront different stressors than in wars past -- some of them demographic in nature and some exacerbated by technology that is supposed to bring people together but, instead, can push them apart.

For instance, soldiers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq tend to be older than their counterparts during Vietnam, which means many have spouses and children.

"Most of the people I served with in the Marine Corps during Vietnam, maybe 85 to 90 percent, were young, out of high school, so they didn't have the pressures of family life, of leaving a family behind, of being responsible for their well-being," noted Chuck Arnold, who served two tours of duty in Vietnam and Cuba and is now coordinator of the veterans program at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.

Today, Arnold pointed out, many of those older soldiers serve as part of the National Guard, and they have families and those families often suffer "vicarious trauma" that only adds to the soldiers' own trauma.

This is compounded by the fairly frequent contact soldiers can now have with family and friends back home, thanks to modern technology.

U.S. soldiers in Vietnam got letters from home, but, by the time they arrived at the front line, the news -- good or bad -- had "softened up," Arnold said. Today's troops get news from home -- not all of it good -- instantaneously via e-mail and cell phone.