Relatively recently, a new diagnosis appeared in military psychiatry - "Chechen syndrome". But such a disease did not arise out of nowhere. Previously, such a syndrome was called Afghan, and before that - Vietnamese. Today it is noted that all the 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 coincidence that in 2001, according to the decree of the President of Russia, a new army position appeared in our country - a military psychologist, which is mandatory for each regiment.
The realities of the modern world
Entering the 21st century was accompanied by great hopes for humanity. 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 residents of ourThe planet is suffering from emerging new ailments, including previously unknown disorders of the mental and nervous system.
What caused the spread of such diagnoses? This is an unfavorable political, criminal, and also military situation, which is observed in the world community. It is she who is an indispensable environment 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 also worry about their friends who are in a difficult life situation. And recently, psychologists are increasingly noting 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, this syndrome is classified as PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder. The disease owes its widespread spread to the unstable military situation in the world.
Who suffers from war syndrome?
Among the patients of psychotherapists you can meet not only those people who were directly involved in hostilities. Families and close people who are worried about the fate of their loved one who has returned from a hot spot often turn to specialists.
Ordinary people who had to see enough of the cruelty of war and survive it also suffer from a similar syndrome. This includes civilians, volunteers, and doctors.
Causes of occurrence
War syndrome is a consequence of a person being in an acute stressful situation. itevents that go beyond the limits of his life experience, putting too much stress on the emotional and volitional components of the psyche.
Symptoms of this disease appear, as a rule, instantly. However, sometimes a person does not notice the signs of a mental disorder that he has for some period. This happens due to the brain blocking unwanted moments of memories. But a certain time passes, and people who have returned from the war can no longer fail to notice more and 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 can cause a feeling of uselessness, misunderstanding and social loneliness.
A bit of history
Mentions of the disease, which was caused by the strongest stressful situations, were found in the records of the first healers and philosophers of Ancient Greece. Similar phenomena occurred among the Roman soldiers. The symptoms of post-traumatic stress were 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 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. Ranked here:
- increased excitability;
-the desire to escape from a situation reminiscent of a traumatic event;
- a high predisposition to aggression and spontaneous actions;- fixation on the situation that led to the injury.
For 20th c. characterized by various natural and social disasters, as well as wars. All this provided medicine with an extensive field for research into psychological pathology, including post-traumatic syndrome.
After the First World War, German psychiatrists noted PTSD in veterans, the symptoms of which increased 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, preventing them from living in peace.
Post-traumatic stress resulting from a military conflict has been studied by specialists for decades. At the same time, not only the First, but also the Second World War provided extensive material for such studies. In those years, different authors called the symptoms of this disorder in different ways. Such a diagnosis sounded in their writings as "military fatigue" and "military neurosis", "combat exhaustion" and "post-traumatic neurosis".
The first systematization of such symptoms was compiled in 1941 by Kardiner. This psychologist called this condition "chronic military neurosis" and developed Freud's ideas in his writings, expressing the opinion that the inability to adapt in peaceful conditions arises from a central physioneurosis, which has a physiological and psychological nature.
Final wordinginterpretation 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.
Special interest in this area of research reappeared after the end of the Vietnam War. Almost 75-80% of the total number of US military personnel who took part in the hostilities easily adapted to peaceful conditions.
The war did not worsen their physical and mental he alth. 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 relationships at work and in the family. Over time, this condition only worsened, although outwardly the person seemed to be quite prosperous. What symptoms indicate that the former soldier has Vietnamese, Chechen or Afghan cider?
Haunting Memories
This is one of the specific backbone 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, melancholy 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 work of the autonomic nervous system. This may be an increase in blood pressure and increased heart rate, the appearance of abundantcold sweats, irregular heartbeats, etc.
Sometimes the echo of war responds with so-called flashback symptoms. It seems to the patient that the past seems to burst into his current peaceful life. This state is accompanied by illusions, which are pathological perceptions of stimuli that actually exist. At the same time, the Chechen syndrome is manifested in the fact that the patient is able to hear the screams of people, 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. The symptoms of the Chechen syndrome are expressed simultaneously in auditory and visual hallucinations. The patient, for example, can see already dead people, hear their voices, feel the breath of 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 tension, drug or alcohol use, prolonged insomnia, or have no apparent cause at all. Similar to this are the attacks themselves, during which obsessive memories appear. Very often they arise spontaneously, but sometimes their development is facilitated by an encounter with one or another irritant, which is a kind of trigger key that leads to reminders of a catastrophe. These can be characteristic smells and sounds, tactile and taste sensations, as well as any object familiar from tragic events.
Avoid anything that reminds you of a stressful situation
Chechenthe syndrome is characterized by the fact that the patient is quickly able to establish the relationship that exists between the keys and the occurrence of seizures of memories. In this regard, former soldiers are trying to avoid any reminder of the extreme situation that happened to them.
Sleep disorders
In the post-war years, former soldiers suffering from PTSD have nightmares. The plot of dreams is a stressful situation experienced by them. In this case, a person sees an unusually vivid picture, which resembles an attack of intrusive memories that occurs during wakefulness. The dream is accompanied by a feeling of helplessness and an acute 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 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 the existing reality.
Most often, it is nightmares that make former soldiers seek help from a specialist. But besides this symptom, sleep disturbances in patients are expressed in many other disruptions in its rhythm. These are difficulty falling asleep and daytime sleepiness, nighttime insomnia, as well as superficial and disturbing sleep.
Guilt
This is also an equally common symptom of war syndrome. Usually, former soldiers seek to rationalize such a feeling, looking for one or another explanation for it. Patients often blame themselves for the death of friends, greatly exaggerating their own.responsibility and engage in self-flagellation and self-blame. At the same time, a person has feelings of moral, mental and physical inferiority.
Strain of the nervous system
Patients who have been diagnosed with the Chechen syndrome by a military psychologist are constantly in a state of alertness. This is partly due to the fear of the manifestation of intrusive memories. Nevertheless, nervous tension takes place even when pictures from the past practically do not excite patients. Patients themselves complain of constant anxiety and that any rustle causes them inexplicable fear.
CNS Depletion
A patient who is constantly in a nervous strain, suffering from sleep disturbance and debilitating bouts of obsessive memories, falls ill with cerebrovascular disease. This disease in its clinical manifestation is expressed by signs characteristic of CNS depletion, namely:
- decrease in mental and physical performance;
- weakening of concentration and attention;
- increased irritability;- decrease in the ability to work creatively.
Psychopathic disorders
Over time, many patients who are diagnosed with the Chechen syndrome often begin to show traits such as:
- alienation from society;
- bouts of aggression;
- anger;
- selfishness;
- propensity for bad habits; - decreased capacity for empathy and love.
Impaired social adaptation ability
Presence of all the above symptomsleads to the fact that the patient becomes difficult to adapt to society. It is difficult for such patients to get along with people, they are conflicted and often break with their social ties (stop contact with colleagues, friends and relatives).
The resulting loneliness is exacerbated by anhedonia. This is a state when a person loses the ability to enjoy the previously loved activity. Patients with the Chechen syndrome sometimes completely immerse themselves in their own world, not interested in either work or hobbies. Such people do not build pans for their future life, as they live not in the future, but in the past.
Treatment
It is in connection with the violation of a person's ability to social adaptation that patients with PTSD very rarely seek help from specialists. People who have passed hot spots are more likely to self-medicate, escaping from nightmares and obsessions with antidepressants, sleeping pills and tranquilizers.
However, at present, modern medicine has a fairly effective drug therapy for such conditions. It is carried out subject to the available indications, namely:
- nervous tension;
- anxiety;
- sharp decrease in mood;
- frequent bouts of obsessive memories;- influx of hallucinations and illusions.
At the same time, drug therapy is always used in combination with psychocorrection and psychotherapy, since the effect of sedatives is clearly insufficientin order to stop the severe symptoms of PTSD.
For those who suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorders and who suffer from insomnia, what should I do? Contact a specialist who will prescribe the recently popular antidepressants that are part of the group of selective inhibitors. 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 the 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 can reduce the number of seizures that cause obsessive memories, irritability, cravings for drugs and alcohol, as well as reduce the likelihood of aggression. In the first days of taking such drugs, there is a high probability of an opposite effect in the form of a slight increase in anxiety. In addition to antidepressants, patients can also be prescribed tranquilizers such as Seduxen and Phenazepam.
When insomnia is especially tormenting, what should I do? In the most severe cases, tranquilizers are prescribed, which are part of the benzodiazepine group. Such drugs as "Xanax" and "Tranxen" allow not only to normalize sleep, but also to eliminate the state of anxiety, accompanied by severe autonomic disorders.
Complete treatment of the Chechen syndrome is impossible without such an obligatory component as psychotherapy. Good results at the same time make it possible to give special sessions, during which the patient relives the already passedthem an emergency situation. At the same time, he tells about the details of this event to a professional psychologist. Another popular method is a session of behavioral psychotherapy, during which the patient is gradually accustomed to the existence of triggers that initiate bouts of intrusive memories.
