STRESS IN THE MILITARY - A PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

The concepts of stress and stress management have drawn increasing attention as the issues they adress seem set to become a major part of man's response to the future shock of rapid, threatening change. As with other established institutions, the military is immune neither from the vast currents of change characteristic of the twentieth-century nor consequent pressures for adaptation.

Since World War II, the rate of technological advancement in the military sphere has been accelerated to the point where it almost staggers the imagination. The galloping obsolescence of new weapons systems has profound implications, as the ever-increasing technological sophistication of warfare. It has thus been pointed out that the battlefield of the future, with its stark . possibility of continuous day-night combat with nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, could well provoke psychiatric casualties that after 30 days may begin to exceed battle casl.lalties.