Seems like through the years, there has been a ton of press and media attention about the woes of Vietnam veterans; PTSS, homelessness, and a litant of mental health issues they suffer from. However, you never hear about messed up WWII or Korean War vets.
So … why does it seem that Vietnam vets have far more mental health issues than other veterans?
WW2 and Korean war vets had a lot of health issues. Where did you get the idea that they didn’t? Vietnam vets may have had more psychological issues due to the attitude of the govt, but I’m not even sure about that.
Show some facts (cite) to back up your claim, please.
Peace,
mangeorge
I nreally can’t show facts, since I don’t have detailed statistics about vets and mental health issues.
I just happen to see a lot of newspaper and magazine articles, and television and news programs, about mental health issues and Vietnam vets. As far as WWII and Korean War vets … almost nothing in the media.
I’ve also never been asked for change by someone claiming to be a WWII vet or a Korean War vet … if a homeless beggar claims veteran status in his pitch, it’s always Vietnam.
Google “World War II” and “PTSD” - 10,300 hits. Korea and PTSD - 10,500 hits. Vietnam and PTSD - 39,600 hits.
I think you’re perceiving a greater problem than there is - the numbers you cite could be explained by the fact that there are more Vietnam vets alive today than WWII vets or Korea vets, just because of the age differences.
There’s also a social and generational difference. If someone came home from WWII with PTSD, odds are people would just say “he went away to the war, and when he came home, he was never the same.” and leave it at that. When did PTSD become a diagnosis, anyhow?
I was growing up during the post WW2 and Korea era (b. 1945), and believe me there were a lot of troubled souls out there. Think “hobo” instead of “homeless”.
It might be a problem of terminology as well – PTSD is a new term for an old problem. Older terms included “shell shock,” “combat fatigue,” and “war neurosis.”
Also, just because the guy hitting you up for spare change is claiming to be a Vietnam vet doesn’t mean he actually is a Vietnam vet. There’s a certain amount of fakery going on there – although I’ve seen differing numbers on how common that fakery is.
I think the biggest problem is that a huge number of homeless guys of the correct age took advantage of the controversy surrounding that particular war and claimed to be veterans when they really were not.
Firstly, I agree with what others have said about whether or not WWII vets had the same problems.
Read “Some Came Running” by James Jones which is I understand based on his own and others’ experiences of being returning WWII vets. Same themes of dislocation, not fitting in, restlessness, drinking etc.
Secondly, if Vietnam Vets experienced more problems, it would hardly be inexplicable. Vietnam vets returned from an isolated little war back to a home that was prosperous and happy and by and large peaceful. But for a few stories on the nightly news, Vietnam was an isolated blip on the landscape. Returning must have been like going through the looking glass. Compare that to WWII: it was so huge that even those at home would have felt it through rationing and so on, and everyone would have known someone who was directly involved. While coming home would have been a shock for WWII vets, a shock shared is a shock halved.
Not to mention that almost no one on the Allied side in WWII would have had any opinion but that they were on the side of the angels and that vets were heroes fighting a just fight. I need hardly describe the difference between that and Vietnam.
Another difference:
WWII Vets returned to an economy that was booming, with a great deal of rebuilding to be done, and a real pent-up demand for consumer goods. So there were plenty of jobs for these Vets. Plus the GI Bill for those who wanted to go to college first.
Vietnam Vets returned to a much less robust economy, and many had trouble finding jobs. And the educational benefits were much less generous. So it’s not really surprising that more of them became homeless.
In 1965 Vietnam seemed like just another foreign war, but it wasn’t
It was different in many ways, as so were those that did the fighting
In World War II the average age of the combat soldier was 26…
In Vietnam he was 19
In inininininin Vietnam he was 19
…
In Vietnam the combat soldier typicaly served a twelve month tour of duty but was exposed to hostile
fire almost everyday
Ninininininininininin 19 nininininninin 19
…
After World War II the Men came home together on troop ships, but the Vietnam
Vet often arrived home within 48 hours of jungle combat
Perhaps the most dramatic difference between World War II and VietNam was coming home…
None of them received a hero’s welcome.
I know a lot of Vietnam-era and Vietnam vets. I can’t say I know any homeless ones. The ones I know are all doing pretty well.
Anecdotal evidence, I know.
But one, a combat veteran and Bronze Star winner, is an executive with a major steel company. Another volunteered for two tours of duty on top of his obligated one year in country, working as a courier in hot combat zones. He’s a systems engineer in my company. about ready to retire.
I also used to be acquainted with Adrian Cronauer, the man Robin Williams portrayed in Good Morning Vietnam. He’s a communications attorney and was recently named to the commission investigating American MIA’s in North Korea and Vietnam.
Even if there’s a higher percentage of PTSD, the majority of people are able to deal with their experiences well, and lead decent and normal lives.
I speak for a portion.not all. of the “Big Deuce” survivors.
Any one who has seen the results of the horror of war-----or who has paricipated in action, carries a quirk,or maybe several, which never leaves him.
It isn’t constant ,in most cases, but it appears at the most unexpected times when that nagging little window of memory pops open.
Those of us who went through it all came home with that"40 knot" or “50 mile” stare in our eyes----and a strong desire NOT to talk about our journey overseas.
Those of us who suffered the constant awarenes of the great unpleasantness are still languishing in some Veteran’s hospital lock ward.
Those who left body parts in Germany or on Peleliu are never unaware of the one which had his initials on it.
NOW---------the same conditiions are there for ALL war survivors—Nam,Korea—wherever and no matter how small the engagement.
War leaves it’s mark—and there’s no eraser!
OL’EZ
True to a point. The steel executive I mentioned never talks about the war. I’s just a part of his life that’s not a topic of discussion, for his friends and family.
The coworker I mentioned, though, talks about his experiences often. I think it’s cathartic for him to do so.
Different men, different coping skills.
You didn’t hear much about it before Vietanam because, for one thing, the term wasn’t in common use (you could look up citations for "DaCosta’s syndrome and find a nearly identical description dating back to the Civil War.)
Here’s what the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome says:
PTSD has subsequently been observed in all veteran populations that have been studied, including World War II, Korean conflict, and Persian Gulf populations, and in United Nations peacekeeping forces deployed to other war zones around the world. There are remarkably similar findings of PTSD in military veterans in other countries. For example, Australian Vietnam veterans experience many of the same symptoms that American Vietnam veterans experience.
IANAV — I’ve had the good fortune to have never been in a situation where people were firing guns at me, or where I had any particular reason to suspect they would be.
I’m under the impression that with WW2 in particular, and for the most part with Korea as well, the American soldiers (and their allies) were reasonably convinced that the US was behind them, not just in the sense of cheering for them and regarding them as heroes (though I assume that would help) but also in the more utilitarian and functional sense of gearing up to win the war, making the necessary decisions and taking advantage of whatever victories the soldiers attained so that accomplishments were not wasted and risks were not taken in vain.
Whereas (again, my impression and not from knowledgable experience), in the case of Vietnam, the soldiers often felt that the war was being badly mismanaged by people back home who weren’t out to win the conflict so much as they were out to prevent a loss. They (the politicians) appeared to be worried that if we went all-out to conquer and hold the land, the Chinese would pour weapons, possibly including nukes, into the conflict, and the soldiers felt that they were being asked to take lots of risks to secure minor victories that were just part of a bigger muddled confused picture of shifting control of chunks of land back and forth with no clear-cut objective, and that there was no end in sight. No coherent strategy. (Today’s goal is to go take that hill over yonder, and oops looks like the hill we took last week at the expense of 104 casualties is again under the control of the north, oh well). So it was not just dangerous and gory, it was dangerous and gory and of questionable purpose. And we’d soon lost the battle for hearts and minds of the civilian population, which became increasingly indistinguishable from semi-organized guerrilla military, and which to an increasing extent hated the Americans as invaders.
Any vets who feel I have misconceptions that need clearing up, go right ahead.
I remember about ten years ago passing by a homeless man wearing camouflage clothes holding a sign saying “Can you help a 38 year-old Vietnam veteran”. I said to myself wait a minute, I’m 38 years old - the war ended when I was 16! From then on, whenever I saw anyone claiming to be a vet who looked younger than I, I considered them scam artists! :wally :dubious:
Thanks for your answers, all. I’ve learned a lot from this thread.
One final thought - the mentally and emotionally scarred Viet Nam vet is a pre-approved theme for movies, tv shows, and newspaper articles. There was not a lot of publicity given to psychology in WWII, maybe a little bit more for Korea. But since the 60’s, almost every college graduate has had a Psychology 101 class, and feels qualified to make a diagnosis.
Peter Morris (possibly quoting a song) writes:
> After World War II the Men came home together on troop ships, but the
> Vietnam Vet often arrived home within 48 hours of jungle combat
> Perhaps the most dramatic difference between World War II and VietNam was
> coming home…
> None of them received a hero’s welcome.
Although there’s something to this distinction, it’s exaggerated. World War II vets were generally received warmly, but it wasn’t a case of them being treated like heroes without par. There were too many of them for that. They generally got their jobs back or reasonable new jobs or (often) got college scholarships, but there was no wholesale worship of them. Vietnam vets were generally treated rather indifferently. We’ve discussed this in other threads. There was no major cases of “spitting on Vietnam vets” (as is sometimes claimed), although there might have been isolated cases of it. They also came back to their old jobs or new ones or to college scholarships. The general reaction was “Oh, you were in Vietnam. Yeah, well, O.K. Let’s talk about something else.”
A couple of years ago, *Reader’s Digest * published an article saying that, overall, Vietnam veterans actually have lower unemployment rates, lower divorce rates, and lower incidence of mental illness, than non-veteran Baby Boomers.
However, if a combat-trained soldier develops mental problems, he is capable of doing enough damage to make the evening news. The reporters won’t describe him as a “mentally ill man who once happened to be in the army”. They describe him as a “mentally ill Vietnam Veteran”.
So, rather than a mental health issue, it becomes a Vietnam War issue.