Am J Psychiatry 1986; 143:618-621
Copyright © 1986 by American Psychiatric Association
The psychological effects of being a prisoner of war: forty years after release
CC Tennant, KJ Goulston and OF Dent
Forty years after the end of World War II, the authors compared a random
sample of former Japanese-held Australian prisoners of war (POWs) with a
group of non-POW combatants of the same era. The POWs were significantly
more depressed than were the control subjects, but the two groups did not
differ in prevalence of anxiety symptoms or alcohol problems. Apart from a
higher rate of postwar duodenal ulcer in the POWs, the two groups had
similar degrees of medical morbidity.
