How psychiatric symptoms varied in World War I and II.

Psychiatric syndromes may be differentially expressed according to cultural expectation. An examination of the literature reveals a predominance of conversion symptoms in World War I and a relative decrease among World War II neuropsychiatric casualties. In the latter conflict, by contrast, "combat exhaustion" and psychosomatic disorders comprised the majority of non-psychotic psychiatric casualties. Determinants of this changing "vocabulary of distress" are discussed.