| The 1980 American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual III (DSM-III), the third revision of a classification and diagnostic methodology for mental diseases, included "post-traumatic stress disorder" (PTSD) for the first time. This newly legitimized diagnosis helped mental health professionals understand and treat victims of such extremely traumatic events as rape, military combat, or earthquakes. It helped veterans groups and other political interests present the plight clearly to the general public and to legislators. Defense attorneys hoped it would help them construct a credible reason for insanity, especially in those defendants who had never committed violent acts or displayed emotional disturbance until after the traumatic event--Vietnam combat experience, in many cases. For example, in State v. Heads (370 So.2d 564 (La. 1979)), a Vietnam War veteran claimed that the sight of a foggy field adjacent to his brother-in-law's house transported him back to a Vietnam combat situation, in which he was forced to kill in self-defense. This, Charles Heads told the court, caused him to overreact during a domestic conflict and kill his brother-in-law.;The development of the PTSD medical diagnosis is itself illustrative of the social/historical factors comprising the "legal culture" of any court case. Just as each legal case shapes and is shaped by historical context and events, so a medical diagnosis like PTSD is culturally bound and by no means scientifically "objective" or acceptable to all mental health professionals--or their patients. For example, one must consider the often stormy "homecoming" of Vietnam veterans as a major factor in the PTSD trials.;This dissertation is about the historical development and, ultimately, the questionable success of military combat-induced post-traumatic disorder (PTSD) as a legal defense in criminal appellate cases in the United States. These cases typically but not exclusively involved veterans of the 1964-1975 U.S.-Vietnam Conflict; they followed the publication of the 1980 DSM-III and the 1987 DSM-III-R, making this psychological war trauma a plausible criminal defense. Earlier cases involving "shell shock" in World War I, "combat fatigue" in World War II, and "brain washing" in the Korean Conflict, are included as available. |
