When exposed to daily rocket attacks in the battlefield, the old PTSD or the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder models says that we become more vigilant. This is what has just been overturned by a study conducted in Tel Aviv’s Department of Psychology after finding out in real time how soldiers cope under severe stress.

Soldiers who came home from the battlefields of Afghanistan, Gaza, Iraq were discovered to have dissociated from the actual threat instead of an increased vigilance. It’s indeed a unique picture painted for the first time manifesting how anxiety shows itself – disproving any prior claims that we tend to get more vigilant in the face of extreme adversity.

This study was conducted on the war grounds of Middle East and did not limit the research to Israeli soldiers. This has implications for US soldiers just the same given the fact that the American government has sent millions of their soldiers to different battlefields, Iraq and Afghanistan comprising the bulk. The more soldiers were sent, the greater the number of PTSD and war-related anxieties they will have to treat.

The same study was able to show the effects of war stresses in real time as this will pave the way for understanding what else could be the trigger factors and other treatment options that may be very effective but out of convention. Given this new development of dissociation and disengagement during rocket attacks, a new way of approaching PTSD and sever anxieties may now be in the offing.

Lead researcher Prof. Bat Haim of Tel Aviv University employed imaging techniques such as the fMRI to see how the brain reacts to anxiety disorders and how people respond to war time attacks. Most of his studies focused on looking at the genetic, molecular, and neural factors that pertains to how the brain processes threats, and in under what context should the data be analyzed.

They found out that all symptoms lead to a neuromarker that can possibly be used to determine who are most likely to develop chronic post-traumatic stress disorders.