More recently, a new diagnosis has appeared in military psychiatry - the "Chechen syndrome." But such a disease did not arise out of nowhere. Previously, this syndrome was called Afghan, and before that - Vietnamese. To date, it is noted that all fighters who went through not only the Chechen campaign, but also visited any other hot spots, suffer from this disease to a greater or lesser extent.
It is no accident that in 2001, according to the decree of the President of Russia, a new army post appeared in our country - a military psychologist, which is mandatory for each regiment.
Realities of the modern world
Entry into the 21st century was accompanied by great expectations of mankind. People believed in the rapid development of medicine, various computer technologies, as well as the latest ways to improve and make life easier. However, as practice shows, despite the rapid development of technology, an increasing number of inhabitants of our planet suffer from emerging new ailments, among which are previously unknown disorders of the mental and nervous system.
What caused the spread of such diagnoses? This is an unfavorable political, criminal, as well as military situation, which is observed in the world community. It is she who is the indispensable medium that gives impetus to the development of such diseases.
Even with a high degree of mental stability, people worry about their country and family. They worry about acquaintances in a difficult life situation. And recently, psychologists have increasingly noted the presence of such a diagnosis as “war syndrome”. Moreover, such a disease does not bypass the most different continents of our planet. In medicine, a similar syndrome is qualified as PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder. Its widespread disease is due to the unstable martial law in the world.
Who suffers from war syndrome?
Among the patients of psychotherapists you can meet not only those people who took a direct part in the hostilities. Families are often approached by specialists, as well as by relatives who are worried about the fate of their loved one who has returned from a hot spot.
From a similar syndrome, ordinary people suffer as well, who had to look at the brutality of the war and survive it. This is a civilian population, and volunteers, and doctors.
Causes of occurrence
War syndrome is the result of a person in an acute stressful situation. These are events that go beyond the limits of his life experience, exerting too much strain on the emotional and volitional components of the psyche.
Symptoms of this disease appear, as a rule, instantly. However, sometimes a person for some period does not notice the signs of a mental disorder that he has. This is due to the brain blocking undesirable moments of memory. But a certain time passes, and people returning from the war can no longer fail to notice the more actively manifesting symptoms, which are a delayed reaction to an emergency.
A long-lasting syndrome does not allow a person to adapt normally to a peaceful life already forgotten for him and is able to cause a feeling of uselessness, misunderstanding and social loneliness.
A bit of history
Mention of the disease, which was caused by severe stressful situations, is found in the records of the first doctors and philosophers of Ancient Greece. Similar phenomena occurred in Roman soldiers. Symptoms of post-traumatic stress are described in great detail in their writings by Herodotus and Lucretius. They noted that the soldiers who went through the war were irritable and anxious. In addition, they constantly repeated memories of the most difficult moments of the battles they had experienced.
And only in the 19th century. scientific studies of PTSD were carried out, after which all manifestations of the pathology, as well as its clinical symptoms, were systematized and combined into one syndrome. This included:
- increased excitability;
- the desire to avoid a situation reminiscent of a traumatic event;
- a high predisposition to aggression and to spontaneous actions;
- fixation on the situation that led to the injury.
For the 20th century. various natural and social disasters, as well as wars, are characteristic. All this provided medicine with an extensive field for studies of psychological pathology, including post-traumatic syndrome.
After World War I, German psychiatrists noted PTSD among veterans, whose symptoms intensified over the years. The echo of the war echoed in them with a state of constant anxiety and nervousness, as well as nightmares. All this tormented people, not allowing them to live in peace.
Post-traumatic stress resulting from a military conflict has been studied by experts for more than a decade. At the same time, not only the First, but also the Second World War provided extensive material for such studies. In those years, various authors called the symptoms of such a disorder in different ways. Such a diagnosis sounded in their writings as “military fatigue” and “military neurosis”, “combat exhaustion” and “post-traumatic neurosis”.
The systematization of such symptoms was first compiled in 1941 by Cardiner. This psychologist called this condition “chronic military neurosis” and developed Freud’s ideas in his writings, expressing the view that the inability to adapt in peaceful conditions arises due to a central physioneurosis, which has a physiological and psychological nature.
The final formulation of the interpretation of PTSD was made in the 80s of the last century, when as a result of numerous studies, rich material was collected on this problem.
Of particular interest in this field of research reappeared at the end of the Vietnam War. Almost 75-80% of the total number of US troops who took part in hostilities easily adapted in peaceful conditions.
The war did not worsen their physical and mental health. But 20-25% of the soldiers could not cope with the consequences of the stress experienced. People with war syndrome often committed suicide and committed acts of violence. They could not find a common language with others and establish normal relations at work and in the family. Over time, this condition only worsened, although outwardly the person seemed quite prosperous. What symptoms indicate that the former soldier has Vietnamese, Chechen or Afghan cider?
Obsessive memories
This is one of the specific system-forming signs of the Chechen syndrome. A person is accompanied by obsessive memories of some traumatic event, which are characterized by the emergence of unusually vivid pictures from the past, which are fragmentary. At the same time, horror and anxiety, longing and helplessness appear. In terms of their emotional strength, such feelings are not inferior to those experienced by a person in the war.
Such attacks are accompanied by various disorders in the autonomic nervous system. This can be an increase in blood pressure and increased heart rate, the appearance of profuse cold sweat, malfunctioning heart rate, etc.
Sometimes the echo of the war responds with the so-called flashback symptoms. It seems to the patient that the past seems to burst into his current peaceful life. Such a state is accompanied by illusions, which are pathological perceptions of existing in reality stimuli. At the same time, the Chechen syndrome manifests itself in the fact that the patient is able to hear people screaming, for example, in the sound of wheels or to distinguish the silhouettes of enemies at the sight of twilight shadows.
However, there are more severe cases. Symptoms of the Chechen syndrome in this case are expressed simultaneously in auditory and visual hallucinations. A patient, for example, can see already dead people, hear their voices, feel the blow of a hot wind, etc.
Flashback symptoms are manifested in increased aggressiveness, impulsive movements and suicide attempts. Influxes of hallucinations and illusions often arise as a result of nervous overstrain, drug or alcohol use, prolonged insomnia, or have no apparent causes at all. The attacks themselves, during which obsessive memories appear, are similar to this. Very often they occur spontaneously, but sometimes their development is facilitated by a meeting with one or another stimulus, which is a kind of trigger key that leads to disaster reminders. It can be characteristic smells and sounds, tactile and taste sensations, as well as any object familiar from tragic events.
Avoiding anything that reminds you of a stressful situation
The Chechen syndrome is characterized by the fact that the patient is quickly enough able to establish the relationship that exists between the keys and the occurrence of bouts of memory. In this regard, former soldiers seek to avoid any reminder of the extreme situation that happened to them.
Sleep disorders
In the postwar years, former soldiers suffering from PTSD have nightmares. The plot of dreams is a stressful situation experienced by them. At the same time, a person sees an unusually vivid picture that resembles an attack of obsessive memories that occurs during wakefulness. The dream is accompanied by a feeling of helplessness and a sharp sense of horror, emotional pain, as well as disturbances in the functioning of the autonomic system. In the most severe cases, such dreams follow one after another and are interrupted by short periods of awakening. This leads to the fact that the patient loses the ability to distinguish his dream from existing reality.
Most often, it is nightmares that make former soldiers turn to a specialist for help. But besides this symptom, sleep disturbances in patients are expressed in many other failures of its rhythm. This is the difficulty in falling asleep and daytime sleepiness, nighttime insomnia, as well as superficial and anxious sleep.
Guilt
It is also an equally common symptom of war syndrome. Usually, former soldiers tend to rationalize such a feeling by looking for certain explanations for him. Patients often blame themselves for the death of friends, significantly exaggerating their own responsibility and self-flagellation and self-incrimination. At the same time, a person experiences sensations of moral, mental and physical inferiority.
Overexertion of the nervous system
Patients who have been diagnosed with Chechen Syndrome by a military psychologist are constantly on the alert. This is partly due to fear of obsessive memories. Nevertheless, nervous tension does occur even when pictures from the past practically do not concern patients. Patients themselves complain of constant anxiety and the fact that any rustling causes them inexplicable fear.
CNS Depletion
A patient who is constantly in a nervous strain, suffering from sleep disturbances and exhausting attacks of obsessive memories, is ill with cerebral growth. This disease in its clinical manifestation is expressed by signs characteristic of depletion of the central nervous system, namely:
- a decrease in mental and physical performance;
- weakening of concentration and attention;
- increased irritability;
- a decrease in the ability to work creatively.
Psychopathic disorders
Over time, many patients diagnosed with Chechen Syndrome often begin to exhibit such traits as:
- estrangement from society;
- attacks of aggression;
- anger;
- selfishness;
- propensity for bad habits;
- decreased ability to empathize and to love.
Disability to social adaptation
The presence of all the symptoms discussed above leads to the fact that it becomes difficult for the patient to adapt in society. It is difficult for such patients to get together with people, they are in conflict and often go on a break with their social connections (they stop contacting colleagues, friends and relatives).
The resulting loneliness is exacerbated by anhedonia. This is a condition when a person loses the ability to get pleasure from his previously beloved activities. Patients with Chechen syndrome are sometimes completely immersed in their own world, not interested in either work or hobbies. Such people do not build pans on their future life, since they live not in the future, but in the past.
Treatment
It is in connection with a violation in a person of the possibility of social adaptation that patients with PTSD very rarely turn to specialists for help. People who have gone through hot spots are more likely to self-medicate, fleeing nightmares and obsessive states with antidepressants, sleeping pills, and tranquilizers.
However, at present, modern medicine has a rather effective drug therapy for such conditions. It is carried out subject to available evidence, namely:
- nervous overstrain;
- anxiety;
- a sharp decline in mood;
- frequent attacks of obsessive memories;
- influx of hallucinations and illusions.
In this case, drug therapy is always used in combination with psychocorrection and psychotherapy, since the effect of sedatives is clearly insufficient to stop the pronounced symptoms of PTSD.
Those who suffer from obsessive conditions and who suffer from insomnia, what to do? Consult a specialist who will prescribe the most popular antidepressants in the group of selective inhibitors recently. These are drugs such as Prozac, Zoloft, and some others. Their reception allows you to get a wide range of effects, including a general increase in mood, the return of a desire for life, the elimination of anxiety, and the stabilization of the state of the autonomic nervous system. In addition, such treatment of the Chechen syndrome allows you to reduce the number of attacks that cause obsessive memories, irritability, craving for drugs and alcohol, as well as reduce the likelihood of aggression. In the early days of taking such drugs, it is highly likely that the opposite effect will occur in the form of a slight increase in anxiety. In addition to antidepressants, tranquilizers such as Seduxen and Phenazepam can be prescribed to patients.
When insomnia is especially tormenting, what should I do? In the most severe cases, tranquilizers are prescribed, which are part of the benzodeazepine group. Such drugs as “Xanax” and “Tranxen” allow not only normalizing sleep, but also eliminating anxiety, accompanied by severe vegetative disturbances.
A full-fledged treatment of the Chechen syndrome is impossible without such an obligatory component as psychotherapy. In this case, good results allow you to give special sessions, during which the patient again experiences the already experienced extreme situation. At the same time, he talks about the details of this event to a professional psychologist. Another popular method is a behavioral psychotherapy session, during which the patient is gradually accustomed to the existence of trigger keys that trigger bouts of obsessive memories.