I’ll tell you straight away that my views on the Great Victory holiday do not coincide with the generally accepted ones. No, I sincerely respect WWII veterans, especially since I was brought up in the tradition of respect for elders. It’s just that the old people who participated in the battles or survived that war on the home front have very little to do with this farce that we see every year on May 9th. They need qualified medical and social assistance, and not parades and speeches by our leaders who use Victory Day for their political PR. And have you ever wondered what we actually celebrate? The end date of one of the bloodiest wars of the 20th century. A kind of mystery of death, dancing on the bones of long-dead people. The road to the Reichstag was densely lined with corpses, both soldiers and civilians, and everyone was zealous, both fascists and communists and allies. History does not tolerate the subjunctive mood, but sometimes you really want to add the phrase “if” to some events. No, I will not go into history, the blog is about psychology, you can read military memoirs and documents on other sites. It’s just that from a medical point of view, the fact that we all joyfully celebrate May 9 is, in fact, an ode to the painful state of the human psyche. And this condition is called “post-traumatic stress disorder,” or PTSD for short. This disease was first described in American military personnel after their inglorious bloody operation in Vietnam 1965-75. The so-called Vietnam syndrome. Then, doctors began to pay attention to the fact that identical symptoms occur in almost all military personnel after being in the zone of any armed conflict. There is the Korean syndrome, Afghan, Chechen. We remember any local military conflict and get the corresponding version of PTSD. The Great Patriotic War is no exception from this perspective either. What do veterans usually talk about at their meetings before the holiday? For the purity of the experiment, let's go back twenty years, so that readers are not tempted to attribute everything to their advanced age. And they say that they remember the Second World War very vividly and clearly to this day, although so many years have passed. They sleep poorly, flinch from sudden sounds, and generally sometimes confuse peaceful reality with armed action. They also mention their nightmares with bloody battles and the bodies of long-dead fellow soldiers. They say that they are tormented by a feeling of guilt towards those dead, for the fact that they survived. They carefully preserve all documents about the war, collect archives, search for reliable information about military events and, accordingly, advocate for the restoration of justice for themselves and their dead friends. Many people still hate the Germans, although it is obvious to everyone that a fascist and a German are not equivalent concepts. They remember the People's Commissar's hundred grams before the battle and their numerous somatic ailments. And almost everyone associates the war years with the most emotionally intense period of their life. What do you think I'm describing now? These are the main symptoms of PTSD! They tell us about their illness, and we admire it. Well, enough theory, let's move on to real cases. I will draw you a portrait of a real Russian warrior. In order not to irritate the zealous defenders of the “sacred” moments of history, this warrior will be modern, soaked in the gunpowder of current local conflicts, and will have nothing to do with the Great Patriotic War. This will be a portrait of one of my patients with post-traumatic stress syndrome. He is about forty years old. He is about ninety meters tall, strong, fit, muscular, no hint of excess weight, a fist the size of a brick. Such a large iron cabinet for storing particularly important information. Usually withdrawn, avoids visual contact, when arriving for an appointment, obediently takes a turn, takes out an e-book and calmly reads it. Doesn't enter into conversations with neighbors when expected, doesn't cause scandals. Secondary technical education. In his second marriage, two children. He is a former riot police officer. Doesn’t remember exactly how many business trips to Chechnyahe had, just a lot, fought in full. These are the first and second Chechen companies: Grozny, Gudermes, Achkhoy-Martan. A lot of combat wounds, shrapnel, bullet, mine-explosive, concussion. In any case, the hands are all covered in specific scars, interspersed with gunpowder along the periphery, irregularly shaped, retracted, healed by secondary intention. This is when the wound healed on its own, without surgical intervention, for a long time and with suppuration. He came to me from the Medical Unit of the Ministry of Internal Affairs already with a disability group and a diagnosis of PTSD. Not for psychotherapy, no, but some kind of psychotherapy. One of the symptoms of PTSD is the development of psychopathization, i.e. secondary persistent deformation of personality traits, quite resistant to psychotherapy. He needed help solving social issues - extending the disability group. Well, get some treatment. He practically did not sleep, was constantly in a state of extreme internal tension, which manifested itself in the form of severe irritability and periodic outbursts of aggression and anger. He himself admitted that he constantly felt like he was at war, and was actually glad that he was not sleeping. Because dreaming is even worse. For many years he dreamed exclusively of Chechnya, battles, military hospitals and dead colleagues. The client never spoke about his victims, but I can assume that there were some and they also came to him at night. He could hardly stand being in a group of people, and was sensitive to any injustice towards himself and other “ordinary citizens.” He spoke sharply negatively about the authorities and security forces. He divorced his first wife because of his extreme quarrelsomeness, and he sued her for a long time after the divorce. At the time of contacting me, his second marriage was beginning to fall apart at the seams, it’s just that the second wife turned out to be fundamentally more patient. He had obsessive movements and tics in the facial area. Despite having a disability group and a pension for a veteran of local wars, he unofficially worked as a security guard at night. Perhaps this improved the situation in the family. He was not supposed to have a weapon, and why would he need a pistol given his hand-to-hand combat skills and build? He was calm only within the hospital. In all other places, he constantly entered into conflicts and squabbles, including with the use of physical force, all the time looking for truth and justice. He constantly came to appointments with bruises on his face, abrasions, broken fists, and a couple of times he broke the bones of his forearm and hands. Let me also note that he said that he absolutely does not drink alcohol. I had no reason not to believe in this, if I drank, I would have injured quite a few people. Of the medications, only very strong and severe neuroleptics affected him. He took azaleptin and aminazine in fairly large dosages simultaneously with tricyclic antidepressants. And all this in order to sometimes sleep without having dreams about the war. The pills had no effect on his aggressiveness. Our hero was kept in the hospital for no more than two or three days. Then all the patients began to irritate him, and he himself asked for discharge, fearing for the integrity of those around him. For outpatient appointments, he also preferred to go to one doctor, he said that he trusted only those whom he was used to. You may ask, what about psychotherapy? Yes, psychotherapy is prescribed in such cases, of course it is prescribed. Patients with PTSD need to be listened to, listened to, listened to. So that they throw out all the accumulated internal dirty tricks from themselves. But this is still a lot of work. When our warrior began to pour out his soul, I myself began to shake. This was not a beautiful and brave war memoir, similar to a Hollywood action movie. It was a description of the black, numbing horror of a war, unnecessary to anyone, cruel, bloody, merciless. Hate is all around. I remember once he talked about how the paramedics forgot to carry five or six seriously wounded soldiers into the dressing tent. Leaving them to freeze right on the ground, on a stretcher, at sub-zero temperatures. We went for a smoke break and got distracted. Four of those wounded died from hypothermia on the hospital grounds. “And I see that the snow is no longer melting on us.” Screamed, screamed, then didn’t"