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Psychosomatic Medicine 36:27-46 (1974)
© 1974 American Psychosomatic Society

Twenty-four Year Mortality Follow-up of Army Veterans with Disability Separations for Psychoneurosis in 1944

ROBERT J. KEEHN MS1, IRVING D. GOLDBERG MPH1, and GILBERT W. BEEBE PHD1

1 Medical Follow-up Agency, National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council, 2101 Constitution Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20418, and Biometry Branch, National Institute of Mental Health, 5600 Fishers Lane, Rockville, Maryland 20852

Address reprint requests to: Robert I. Keehn, 2101 Constitution Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20418

World War II Army inductees medically discharged for psychoneurosis in 1944 experienced a 20-percent excess mortality over the period 1946-1969, highest in the earlier years and diminishing thereafter. Some of the differential mortality, e.g., from inflammatory diseases of the CNS, may represent diagnostic error in 1944. Behavioral maladjustments, or pathological personality types coexisting with psychoneurosis, may explain the increased risk of death from alcoholism, suicide, and homicide. Although they usually existed prior to service, and most probably continued thereafter, the anxiety and emotional conflicts leading to discharge in 1944 seem not to have been associated with chronic disturbances of physiologic function sufficient to cause severe organic disease in later life. A possible exception is cerebrovascular disease, for which the discrepancy is neither large nor reinforced by similar differences in mortality from hypertension or hypertensive heart disease.

Submitted on March 26, 1973




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