Post-traumatic stress disorders and European war veterans

After tracing the history of PTSD as a diagnosis and exemplifying its use among non-European war veteran groups, this review article documents the size and characteristics of European war veteran populations and the known psychological, social and medical sequelae of war experience since 1918. Models of psychopathology vary markedly over time and between countries. Treatment practices owe more to sociopolitical and military expediency than systematic assessment of European veterans' needs and treatment outcomes. PTSD has not yet attained the pivotal status it enjoys in studies of American war veterans. Reasons for this are offered along with a proposal that recent European studies rightly highlight a broad spectrum of post-war adjustment difficulties in which PTSD emerges as a process phenomenon with implications for prognosis and future care planning.