Researchers Examine Most Resilient Soldiers

Facing Combat Without Stress?
Researchers Examine Most Resilient Soldiers

By LISA CHEDEKEL | Courant Staff Writer
August 25, 2007

No one's trying to engineer the perfect soldier.

Yet.

But if a network of researchers that includes clinicians at the veterans hospital in West Haven continues down the track they've set out on, troops heading off to war could someday be inoculated against combat stress.

"Are there ways to emotionally inoculate people? It's a new area of research," said Dr. Steven Southwick, deputy director of the Clinical Neurosciences Division of the National Center for PTSD, an arm of the Department of Veterans Affairs that is housed at the West Haven campus. "We do know there are factors that make some people resilient. There are genetic components to it, but there's a huge learning component. People can train themselves to be more resilient."

Nearly a decade ago, Southwick and his colleagues began studying the chemical and psychosocial factors that make some trauma survivors more resilient than others. Through extensive studies of Vietnam POWs and other trauma survivors, and U.S. special forces and Navy SEALs, the researchers have identified a dozen behavioral traits - and two stress-related hormones - that appear to buffer the effects of psychological trauma.

The findings could have implications for future training, screening and even medication of troops preparing for combat.

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This would be good but in the process, what else will they give up? If they no long feel stress, what else will they not feel? If they no long have fear, then what else will this lead to?