rs such as combat causing physical injury may be exposed since the current pain may be localized to the site of a former injury. Physical symptoms may also reveal comorbid diagnoses; high levels of PTSD are comorbid with anxiety and depressive disorders which commonly present physical symptoms. Alcohol abuse, common in PTSD, may be responsible for certain physical symptoms. Premorbid personality factors can be discovered with regard to the expression of physical symptoms; neuroticism and introspectiveness, implicated in somatization, may result in certain physical symptoms in traumatized individuals (Mcfarlane, Atchison, Rafalowicz, & Papay, 1994).
Although the course of the illness is unique to each individual, studies of Vietnam combat veterans reveal the longitudinal course of chronic combat-related PTSD. Symptom oncet was found to be characterized by onset during the Vietnam War; an increase in symptoms during the first few years after the war t
...