Shell Shock

Shell shock is the term used to describe PTSD during WW1, where many people were effected with it. They were Shell Shocked because with the war came all new kinds of ways for the horrors of war to be inflicted upon soldiers. With these new horrors soldiers faced, it shook them to their core, and changed them forever. Soldiers and civilians who were Shell Shocked, faced flashbacks, night terrors, unwillingness to return from the front. Soldiers were unwilling to return to battle because they did not want to return to the place they originally experienced a traumatic event, such as the front.

At the beginning of the war doctors did not know what was going on with the soldiers, and thought that it was either cowardice or that they had developed a neurological injury. Some of the doctors attempted to fix the disability with solitary confinement, electro shock therapy, and were often sent back to the battle field still shell shocked. As the war went on though, lots of research was done. Soldiers were able to recover from their Shell Shock through therapy, where they would talk through their experience every day. This form of psychotherapy helped the soldier recover enough to readjust to society and rarely back to the battlefield. The mistreatment of soldiers led to a generation of soldiers left with the scars of war, but the research done was able to greatly understand the disease, and help treat it.