Invisible Wounds

The book provides a brief history of post-traumatic stress disorder, its characteristic features and criteria, in addition to recent research regarding its effects on vererans and families. The author also provides several research models, theories for treatment, identifying triggers, symptoms, and probabilities of suicidal ideations. 

Although not written in a traditional chapter format, the text begins and ends with each section providing enough information to assist veterans in understanding enough about post-traumatic stress disorder to assist them in seeking help and applying for veterans' benefits.

The author begins by discussing how Egyptian and Roman soldiers may have once described symptoms similar to modern post-traumatic stress disorder syndromes. These soldiers, after returning from war, were faced with the same after-effects as today's veterans. 

The texts also provided some of the earliest research of noted psychiatrists and researchers like Jean-Martin Charcot and Sigmund Freud. Charcot and Freud's research has given use of the first clinical diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder; although at their time, the condition was called hysteria, the symptoms are similar.