People have likely been suffering from PTSD since the dawn of time. Unfortunately, traumas are nothing new. However, the first scientific studies date back to the end of the 1800s, when the railroad came into existence. There were accidents, and strange symptoms were noted in the victims, such as their refusal to get back on the train, or having flashbacks of the accident.
The first hypothesis was that bits of metal had penetrated the brain and caused these symptoms. Nothing changed until the first two world wars. For the first time, new disorders appeared: shell shock, concentration camp syndrome and combat fatigue.
During that period, it was noted that military personnel experienced the same symptoms as those found in train accident victims: they refused to return to combat, they had flashbacks and nightmares about the experience. At that time, there was a very effective treatment for soldiers suffering from PTSD. They were considered cowards and deserters, and they were shot. Obviously you will agree with me in saying that this got rid of the PTSD once and for all. But it also got rid of the soldiers.
I say that with a smile on my face, but it's to show you just how far we've come with regard to this syndrome. It has long been seen as a sign of weakness among military personnel. They were thought not to be doing their duty towards their homeland, and to be deserters. They were punished for committing war crimes. In North America, it took the Vietnam war to bring about a change in attitude with regard to PTSD.
The Americans, who saw traumatized veterans returning home by the thousands, were unable to consider these individuals as cowards and deserters. In fact, many of them had been decorated, some of them had acted heroically in combat and others had graduated from the best known elite military schools. West Point is one such example. It was a shock for Americans. They wondered how such soldiers, who had graduated from the best schools and acted so heroically, could be suffering from such incapacitating symptoms.
It was also during the 1970s that scientific articles on rape trauma syndrome, as it's known, were published for the first time. Burgess and Holmstrom dealt with this in 1979. At that time, the very powerful American women's movement noticed surprisingly similar symptoms among completely different types of victims. Women who had been raped were afraid of sexual relationships, of men, had nightmares about the sexual attack and were in a constant state of alert. The American peace and women's movements were first and foremost in the fight to have the Senate recognize PTSD in 1980.
Since then, universities and some American veterans' hospitals have focused on what they call post-traumatic stress disorder. They are far ahead of us. When I did my Ph.D.—and it wasn't in 1920 but in 1993—it was the second Ph.D. in Quebec on PTSD. In 1997, when I began to provide training at the Sainte-Anne Hospital, a veterans' hospital in Montreal, it was the first time that the participants had received specific training on this subject. There was pressure in Quebec to make more psychologists available.
Currently, the troops are still not accompanied by Quebec or Canadian psychologists. For many years, our soldiers had to consult American psychologists. We consider this a start. We were lucky not to have experienced the Vietnam war. General Dallaire played an important role with regard to PTSD in the Canadian armed forces. He was one of the first to name this disorder. He dared to say that he had it. Yet, he was a general. His confession destroyed many taboos and helped to get this disorder recognized.