Veterans' Mental Health in the Wake of War

Abstract

Some aspects of the psychological experiences of war bind veterans together across temporal and national boundaries. Consider Hotspur's traumatic nightmares in Shakespeare's King Henry IV, Part I, the challenges confronting Homer's Odysseus on his return home from Troy, the alienation and reentry problems faced by the German survivors of the trenches of World War I in Erich Maria Remarque's The Road Back, and the emotional numbing and intrusive recollections of jungle warfare afflicting Bao Ninh's North Vietnamese protagonist in The Sorrow of War. These depictions continue to ring true with regard to our newest veterans from Afghanistan and Iraq. . . .