Suicide, Insanity and Psychological Cost of Combat on Soldiers

Veterans of the Civil War were perhaps the first to draw attention to the possible psychological consequences of combat. At the time, veterans with psychological problems, including criminality, alcoholism and addiction, violent behavior, and suicide were attributed to “nervous trouble”, “nostalgia”, “soldier's heart”, and other vaguely defined conditions which are now known as post-traumatic stress disorder.

In this work, the authors, respectively the Senior Fellow and the Chairman of the Burton Blatt Institute at Syracuse University, devoted to the advancement of persons with disabilities, examine the effects of the war on a sampling of Union veterans, both black and white, with particular attention to the suicides now recognized as a frequent result of PTSD.