Troop Mental Ills: Psychiatric or Organic?

Troop Mental Ills: Psychiatric or Organic?
By ELSPETH CAMERON RITCHIE
May 22, 2012

There’s a continuing tension over whether mental disorders are “organic” or “psychological”. The first is easier to define — a brain injury caused by an insult, such as a bullet wound, blow to the head or bomb blast. “Psychological” is usually chalked up to bad parenting.

Two new debates raise this issue again. One is whether “post-traumatic stress disorder” should be called “post-traumatic brain injury”. The other is the emerging findings on “CTE” — chronic traumatic encephalopathy — which shows long-acting brain changes after concussions.

The term “shell shock” was later re-named “not yet diagnosed, nervous”, “battle fatigue”, “PTSD” and “combat stress reaction”. Now the term “post-traumatic stress injury” is being considered.


Dr. Remington Nevin has proposed that some of these reactions are actually the result of neurotoxic injuries from certain anti-malarial medications given to soldiers over the years, most recently mefloquine, or Lariam®.

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