Life Span Analysis

For millenias, groups, tribes, communities, and nations around the world have formed armies, developed strategies, and built and innovated tools of war. They built these units for strength, power, domination, and justice. From spears that tear the skin of another human to Weapons of Mass Destruction that can wipe out entire areas of land, militaries have gradually expanded the lethality and effectiveness of killing, not just animals, but each other as human beings. Ironically, this kind of behavior has become the norm.

At least it has when a person joins the military. Almost every major country in the world has a standing army, with a few exceptions (CIA “World Factbook”). However, to have an army, a country needs bodies, and they have to

Many veterans with heavy combat exposure have seen and experienced excessive and abundant amounts of these scenes, which is obviously infinitely much more than the average civilian will ever see. As a result, it can produce some disturbing outcomes on mental health. “Veterans with heavy combat exposure generally have more psychopathology or psychiatric disorders than others” says Spiro, Avron, et al in their Life-Span Perspective article on military service (93). Hoge, Charles et al also state that “other military conflicts has shown that deployment and exposure to combat result in increased risk of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), major depression, substance abuse, functional impairment in social and employment settings, and the increased use of health care services” (1023). It is important to note that those who have combat exposure have a higher chance of these issues. Nasveld, Peter, et al. state in an article that “Among military personnel recently deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and who did not have PTSD at baseline (or before deployment), the new onset of self-reported PTSD symptoms increases threefold in deployed military personnel with combat exposures compared to those of non-deployed personnel" (“Effects of deployment on mental health in modern military forces: A review of longitudinal studies”). So if a person serves in the military, but does not experience combat exposure or even deployment, PTSD is generally less likely to occur. However, a threefold increase chance of self-reported PTSD symptoms with combat exposure compared to none should be scary. Nasveld, Peter, et al. also found, though, that “...the new onset of PTSD was less frequent in deployed personnel without combat exposure than in non-deployed personnel, indicating that combat exposures, not the deployment itself, affected the onset of PTSD”