Connecticut Valley Hospital holding up PTSD research

Well, that is exactly what they are doing. Privacy issue? These were soldiers in the Civil War for heaven's sake! What if Vietnam veterans decided that they had "privacy issues" and would not participate in any of the PTSD research being done to help them? Did Connecticut Valley Hospital officials ever think of that? Why would they stand in the way of doing something potentially monumental in removing the stigma of PTSD? History has shown this wound down thru the centuries. The more information coming out about our ancestors and the history of this wound, the more the stigma of being a warrior will erode.


PTSD is a normal reaction to abnormal events. The men fighting in the Civil War walked among the death fields with their own countrymen, relatives fighting against relatives and dying among other American warriors with just their uniforms to separate them. This is important research and they need to release the records to help heal this nations veterans.

Researchers Want Access To Civil War Veterans' Health Records
By JESSE LEAVENWORTH The Hartford Courant
June 1, 2009
A group of researchers says the state's mental health agency is withholding information about a significant chapter in Connecticut history.

The researchers, who are compiling a book on the state's role in the Civil War, are seeking files from Connecticut Valley Hospital on veterans who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, known in the 19th century as "soldier's heart."

The conflict pits the historians' desire to tell complete stories of those Yankee fighters against the state's responsibility to protect patient rights, extended in this case to the living relatives of those long-dead soldiers.

"The reason that we're pursuing it, we're interested in the lives of these soldiers," said Matt Warshauer, a history professor at Central Connecticut State University. "Over the last 50 years, there has been a real shift in the study of war. It's moved from big battles and the strategies and the actions of generals and much more toward the average soldier. ... People have become tremendously interested in the lives of these soldiers."

How does a man process such a memory and carry on? Some could not. Combat veterans then — and now — suffered deep, sometimes incapacitating mental wounds.

"With all we have learned about PTSD, it makes it that much more relevant and fascinating" to study how the condition was treated 150 years ago and how Connecticut veterans and their families dealt with it, Warshauer said.

The effort to document those individual stories, as well as the extent of PTSD among state Civil War veterans, began last fall. Michael Sturges, one of the book's researchers and a graduate student of Warshauer's, was denied access to the files and told that he would have to get permission from living relatives of the former patients.
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