ABSTRACT
The major psychological and medical consequences of armed conflicts and other large-scale catastrophes have been known for more than a century. Studies conducted on combatants in the Korean and the Vietnam wars documented a syndrome of symptoms often seen in soldiers and others exposed to high levels of war zone stress, and revived the interest of the scientific community in the consequences of both man-made and natural disasters. This led to the development of the new psychiatric category named Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Originally created to explain a specific constellation of symptoms suffered by soldiers, the boundaries of this disorder have been widened and its diagnostic criteria elaborated upon to describe a syndrome that is more prevalent in the general population than was previously believed.
