Sunday, February 14, 2010
Psychological Effects on POW's of WWII
WWII was not only the cause of major conflicts and death, but it also caused a tremendous amount of psychological effects on soldiers. There were many cases of different disorders, most of which were from POW's (Prisoners of War) who were captured by the Germans. The tables (above) were various medical reports on POW's who were recently released from concentration camps towards the war's end. The doctors who diagnosed these POW's were from the Minneapolis medical center--one of the many medical centers soldiers had checked into.
The most notable statistic of Table 1 (Top-Left) are the cases of diabetes--this was most likely caused by the bad food given to POW's at the concentration camp.
Apart from the depressive disorders from POW's in Table 2 (Top-Right), the prevalence of alcohol dependency was 21%-24%. Perhaps soldiers had to resort to drinking as a method to relieve themselves of the horrors of the camp?
Table 3 (Bottom-Left) shows the weight loss of individuals with a certain health disorder. Those with hypertension lost the most weight, which may have been a notable observation at the time, as hypertension might have not been widely known of.
Finally, the last table (Bottom-Right) study what the POW's claim to have experienced, which may help doctors diagnose their problems. As you can see, just about everyone in the camps were injured during captivity, and about half were subject to labor. Most of them recalled mental suffering and experienced delirium.
These tables are be great examples of the psychological effects that were inflicted upon POW's, and they are the closest we may ever know of how horrifying concentration camps may have been.
Information from the PDF file: http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED290998&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED290998
Images cropped and compiled from the PDF file.
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It's interesting that there are side-effecs to even soldiers who guard the concentration camp because I've only heard of people themselves who are victims in the concentration camps having side-effects. Not only people in that time that have side-effects, people who read about what happens in the concentration camps in the present also have nightmares after reading it. I've even heard of 2 medical programs that aim to only kill people in the scariest way and has phsyco doctors called T4 and 14f13.
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