NEW YORK — The pain and the stress, the anxiety and the depression, all those feelings that come from the post-World War II war on terror are all the more real now, a study finds.
It’s one of the findings of a study conducted at the University of Michigan, the study was published Monday in the journal PLOS ONE.
“There’s no doubt that there are more people in the world who are suffering from post-war trauma than we have ever been able to see before,” said Dr. Paul Hahn, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the university and one of two authors of the study.
Hahn and his colleagues asked a group of volunteers to watch a video that showed people in a military hospital in Germany recovering from injuries suffered in World War II.
The video was made to show how people recovered from trauma after being injured by an enemy soldier, for example.
They also watched the video to find out how their bodies responded to a variety of stressors including extreme cold, stress, and a stressful environment, the researchers said.
What they found was that people who watched the traumatic video experienced more post-conflict anxiety and more post post-Conflict depression.
People who watched more traumatic videos also had more post war pain, more post traumatic stress disorder and more symptoms of PTSD than people who didn’t watch the video.
In the study, people who were exposed to war-related stress also reported experiencing a higher risk for depression, anxiety, and post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
They also had higher levels of stress hormones and higher levels for cortisol, a hormone that plays a key role in regulating blood pressure and heart rate.
“We were surprised to see that the stressors that were perceived as the most harmful were actually ones that actually didn’t have any effect on the outcome,” Hahn said.
“In fact, they were beneficial in terms of decreasing anxiety and improving people’s mental health,” he said.