The Atlantic magazine this month has a story about the Grant Study, a longitudinal study which followed 268 "Harvard Men," from the classes of '42, '43 and '44, from their sophomore year in college, through for the next 42 years. The Grant Study men, those who are still alive, are now in their 80s, and approaching death. It wasn't the purpose of the study, but because so many of the men served in World War II, the study was able to comment that, among other things:
"More than 80 percent of the Grant Study men served in World War II, a
fact that allowed (the study's administrator) Vaillant to study the effect of combat. The men who
survived heavy fighting developed more chronic physical illnesses and
died sooner than those who saw little or no combat, he found. And
“severity of trauma is the best predictor of who is likely to develop
PTSD.” (This may sound obvious, but it countered the claim that
post-traumatic stress disorder was just the manifestation of
preexisting troubles.)
The full story, called "What makes us happy," by Joshua Wolf Shenk, is linked here.
