Thursday 17 November 2011

Video Analysis

We chose this video because it shows some possible symptoms of PTSD during WW1. This video is good as you can see just how affected they were and you can only imagine what they went through. Unfortunately, symptoms like these were seen as 'cowardice' and soldiers could be shot for showing them.
For the returned soldiers soldiers who had PTSD (and hadn't been shot), returning to normal life would have been very difficult. Many symptoms of the illness would limit employment options for the soldiers; for example, physical PTSD symptoms (constantly shaking/ trembing, inability to stop moving) would have impacted on their ability to farm. This would have been especially difficult as the main employment for returned soldiers was farming as all Australian states had a Returned Soldiers Settlement Scheme in which land was set aside and  either given, or sold at a low price to returned soldiers. For returned soldiers with symptoms such as constant mumbling, selective deafness, being easily startled  or frightened by loud noises or images (such as soldiers uniforms) it would have made doing almost every job difficult.
There have been some suggestions that in this video the symptoms had been exaggerated by a mental hospital who took the footage, to convince family and friends of soldiers suffering this to send them there. However, there are other videos which depict similar symptoms and which wasn't taken by a hospital so it is pretty likely these are true. (Before you ask why we didn't use them- it was because they were extremely depressing)

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