Post-traumatic stress disorder, often referred to as PTSD is a mental health disease that people develop after experiencing and or witnessing a traumatic event in their life. When diagnosed with PTSD your personality can drastically change. In the book A Separate Peace, the author John Knowles establishes a character, Elwin Lepellier to be a prime candidate for post-traumatic stress disorder. Lepellier appears to have PTSD due to the many symptoms he was expressing. A common symptom is angry outbursts (opposing viewpoints, Gale). Leper demonstrates this symptom in chapter ten, page one forty three. It states “‘I escaped.’ the word surging out in a voice and intensity that was not leper 's.” In other words as Gene, the narrator of the …show more content…
To begin with, approximately a third of veterans will experience PTSD after living through trauma (Opposing viewpoints, Gale). In chapter ten, page one hundred and fifty of A Separate Peace it reads, “...he was holding a broom because we had been sweeping out the barracks, but I saw right away that it wasn 't a broom, it was a man 's leg that had been cut off.” This is an example of the trauma these veterans lived through which caused the PTSD. On the same note, in the database Are you at risk of suffering from PTSD? Found on Opposing Viewpoints, Gale, it states "A first responder is twice as likely to develop PTSD." Elwin was considered a first responder because he was a soldier in war. A first responder is more likely to see a traumatic things because they are constantly exposed to terror therefore are at higher risk of having PTSD. Next, in a study performed by Yale it was proven that about thirty percent of veterans experience post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms. Those statistics are quite high, so it 's no surprise Elwin Lepellier falls into that thirty percent. To, summarize it 's no shock that Elwin