Psychologoical and Psychosocial Consequences of Combat and Deployment with Special Emphasis on the Gulf War (Gulf War Illnesses Series)

Research in the neurosciences has demonstrated that the boundary between the external world (its events, pressures, concerns and stress) and the brain and body has been broken. The concept of anything being all in the mind is scientifically and intellectually dead. While some data remain ambiguous and direct causal effect cannot be given to stress per se, the overall patterns of research findings demonstrate that stress is a contributing factor to many illnesses, including somatic and psychological symptoms. Therefore, very real consequences attend those who experience prolonged subacute chronic stress, which characterized in the Gulf deployment, combat, and return home. It is feasible that the effects of these stresses made some soldiers more vulnerable to environmental pathogens, both in the theater and at home, than they would otherwise have been.^ The symptoms of such insults, nested in sociocultural beliefs about illness and the Gulf, might well have amplified deleterious somatic consequences. Like many illnesses, those pertaining to service in the Gulf have been culturally shaped. An illness narrative describes the causes of the illness as perceived by the patient and is most