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Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Institutionalized World War II Veterans

From the Division of Geriatric Psychiatry, Sunnybrook Health Science Centre, North York, Ontario, and North York General Hospital. Address correspondence to Dr. N. Herrmann, Department of Psychiatry, Sunnybrook Health Science Centre, 2075 Bayview Avenue, Room FG21, North York, Ontario M4N 3M5.

Relatively little is known about posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in World War II (WWII) veterans, despite the significant number of studies on this problem in Vietnam veterans. The authors document the prevalence of PTSD and other psychiatric disorders and investigate the etiological correlates of the syndrome in elderly, institutionalized WWII veterans. Sixty-two cognitively intact subjects (mean age 74.2 years), residents in a veterans' long-term care facility, were assessed for past and present psychopathology. A second investigator, blind to patients' psychiatric status, determined the degree of combat exposure and administered a checklist of pre-war and wartime variables. The lifetime prevalence of PTSD was 23%. Of those veterans with PTSD, 57% experienced chronic symptoms. The lifetime prevalence of other diagnoses was also high, including 3 7%for major depression and 53%for alcohol abuse. There was a strong correlation between the severity of the combat stressor and the development of PTSD. Significant correlations between PTSD and some pre-war variables were also found: more family histories of alcohol abuse, more deaths of close family members in early life, and less likelihood of having held a job for more than 1 year prior to the war. PTSD in elderly, institutionalized WWII veterans is a common, serious problem that is often unrecognized.