History of a new concept

The word trauma comes from the Greek trauma, meaning wound. The Indo-European root ter (found in the word turn) refers to the effect of wear and tear caused by a circular motion (J.Picoche).

Traumatology was long the province of barbers. At the end of the Middle Ages, surgeons gradually replaced them. Wars were the leading cause of injuries and trauma in general. It never occurred to anyone that these brutal battles could leave psychological scars on soldiers.

However, by the end of the 19th century, medical officers in the U.S. Army realized that combat experience could cause psychological disorders in men. They called it “Soldier's Heart" or "battle fatigue.” Doctors and army commanders tried to trivialize the phenomenon for a long time. Even in 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War, members of the official American Psychiatric Association considered the problem so unimportant that it was not even mentioned in the latest edition of the American Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. As soon as the war ended, ex-soldiers stormed the veterans' centers; it was clear that they had suffered severe disorders during the war. Nearly a million young men and women suffer then from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). Twenty years later, 50% were still suffering from nightmares, flashbacks, violence, and anxiety. Many were addicted to drugs and alcohol.

After World War II, many studies on “Concentration Camp Syndrome” began to be published. For the first time, scientists examined the devastating effects of war, imprisonment, and, ultimately, genocide on civilians who survived the horror. Again, the same persistent symptoms of PTSD were found. Since most of these researchers had experienced front-line combat or were survivors of the camps, their attitude this time was entirely new.

In the 1970s, parallel to the women's movement in the U.S., two new groups attracted attention: women and children, victims of rape and sexual abuse of all kinds. Accident and fire victims were also included. American psychiatrists observed that all these tragedies had many similarities in their short- and long-term effects. After a long period of preparation, PTSD was finally included in the DSM III in 1980. Psychotraumatology thus entered the scientific mainstream. The suffering of victims was finally recognized.

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, and as a result of increased media coverage of the effects of violence around the world, the terms psychotrauma, PTSD, and debriefing became commonplace in the press, radio, and television.