GDG- ACW & PTSD

[Batrinque at aol.com]

In a message dated 1/22/2012 4:28:39 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
madpd2001 at yahoo.com writes:

Bruce,  et al, found the same study you did in the Archive of General 
Psychiatry.  Looks like they relied on pension records. Must admit to being 
ignorant of the  caliber and quality of the information in them, how complete, 
etc. What do  they generally contain? Might the vet have a motive to 
exacerbate symptoms? On  the other hand the stigma attached to mental illness was 
much greater then  than now (although we still have a ways to go as a society  
IMHO) 
 
I have not dug heavily into the study, but I think that a major direction  
of focus was on age of death (and from what identified cause), mapping that  
against the age of enlistment, whether or not a POW, how heavy the wartime  
casualties had been in their unit.  And these were not all "mental health"  
issues by any means, with cardiac problems and gastro-intestinal 
difficulties  being of major interest.  The primary focus was not bumping veterans up  
against non-veterans, but how veterans varied within that population, with  
differences linked to their prior service.  

Bruce  Trinque
Amston, CT