I think (although I could well be wrong) that we're having a classic message board miss communication in that the second half of your opening paragraph is pretty much what I meant by my second point.

I think I was probably just agreeing with your first statement [iin part[/i, whilst reiterating your second point.



We are furiously agreeing with one another!

Lots of interesting points here (and on the thread in general). I think stress is a factor – and while I do think we were not 'designed' at all but have evolved, I don't think that living in very densely populated areas is what we have (yet?) evolved to be able to comfortably and easily do.



I'd also pick up on what Jerry said: I remember meeting a very elderly man once, who had been in the war. He couldn't get over the culture of counselling and stress etc, and effectively said that people should have some 'stiff upper lip' – he was a bit more East End working class about it, though.



On the other hand, someone I knew tells the tale of their father, who went to war (just after my friend was born) and came back apparently okay, but had turned into someone who abused both his wife and son, and drank himself into an early grave. He had, apparently, been standing next to a friend when that friend's head was blown off.



If we look back at WWI, we know there were many, many cases of, in effect, stress – or shell shock as it was called, and many were often 'diagnosed' with execution, with the sufferer condemned as a coward.



I do think there are plenty of things we know more about and understand more these days, and can therefore diagnose better. Whether there are also conditions (if that's an acceptable term), such as ADD and so on that are caused or triggered or exacerbated by some very recent factors (additives in processed food, for instance) is another question. But it may be that there are many more factors involved.

There's probably a cat internet somewhere, where LoLZDally has become a big hit.

Probably?



There will DEFINITELY be a cats internet, cats will have invented the internet but not told us about it in the same arrogant way that they just walk into houses and mew loudly "I'm living here now, you must feed me at the same time every night, you must provide me with a tray to crap in, you must clean that tray frequently, and I'll lay on whatever furnishings I damn well like, now move out of my way and fetch me some nibbles".



"Oh and by the way - that dog, he'll have to go"

PTSD can be crippling. I lived here with vietnam vets who you can't have anything bar compasssion and empathy for. Not because of any political agenda or bias for war, just they state these boys came home in. And where then treated poorly by their own people.



I was personally very pleased when Professor Simon Charles Wessely got awarded in the Honours List for services to Military Healthcare and to Psychological Medicine. Amongst all the posh s with their business contacts and the twisted ear mob and the bunch that used to play sticky biscuit at Eton.

To me, it's irrelevant what 'side', for want of a better phrase, veterans come from, or whether their government was justified in sending them to war – the politicians are ultimately responsible, not the 'cannon fodder'. And I use that phrase with sympathy for those so used.



Cliché alert – but when the cannon fodder come from the sons and daughters of the politicians, then maybe wars will be reduced.

Yeah, the governments are indeed responsible for the deployment of a country's troops for military actions. And only relatively recently, do they acknowledge their reponsibility to the mental well being of troops.



You can send in 100 people into a situation of high stress. 99 of them may not be affected at that time. The next 100 sent in to the same scenario, you may get 80 not getting affected. It's so hard to know what will happen. And there will be differing levels of anxiety and stress amongst those traumatised.



On the Vietnam vets over here. In my old RSL, I used to have fascinating conversations with these blokes. One in particular, who is highly intelligent, but literally just drinks all day, every day. Often with his mates for the last 40 odd years. He always talks about his mate "porky pete" who was the rich kid in the platoon as was always the "tail end charlie". He said to me that he has no idea how that bloke spent most of his time there walking backwards. Yet if you saw this bloke, you know there's something not quite right with him. Yet he is still capable of empathy for his mate.