Shook over hell
Subtitle: post-traumatic stress, Vietnam, and the Civil War
By: Eric T. Dean, Jr.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Cambridge, Mass
Language: eng
Number of pages: 315
Subjects: Post-traumatic stress disorder; Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975 -- Veterans -- Mental health; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Veterans -- Mental health
Description: Eric Dean relates the psychological problems of veterans of the Vietnam War to the mental and readjustment problems experienced by veterans of the Civil War.

Employing a multidisciplinary approach that merges military, medical, and social history, Dean draws on individual case analyses and quantitative methods to trace the reactions of Civil War veterans to combat and death. He seeks to determine whether exuberant parades in the North and sectional adulation in the South helped to wash away memories of violence for the Civil War veteran.

His extensive study reveals that Civil War veterans experienced severe persistent psychological problems such as depression, anxiety, and flashbacks with resulting behaviors such as suicide, alcoholism, and domestic violence. By comparing Civil War and Vietnam veterans, Dean demonstrates that Vietnam vets did not suffer exceptionally in the number and degree of their psychiatric illnesses.

The politics and culture of the times, Dean argues, were responsible for the claims of singularity for the suffering Vietnam veterans as well as for the development of the modern concept of PTSD.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [237]-310) and index.
Revision of the author's thesis.