Post-war research on post-traumatic stress disorder : part II : 1989 onwards

The paper illustrates the research on post-traumatic disorders conducted in Kraków at the Department of Psychotherapy and the Department of Psychiatry of the Jagiellonian University Medical College after 1989. The political changes that occurred in Poland after 1989 allowed the research to be extended with new groups of survivors. Having conducted the research of the former concentration camp prisoners, the study started to be carried out in the two research teams: 1) the former prisoners of the Stalinist period, Siberian deportees, war veterans and others were examined at the former Social Pathology Institute of the Department of Psychiatry, Jagiellonian University Medical College and the work is continued at the Department of Psychotherapy, Jagiellonian University Medical College; 2) at the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinic the research of the Holocaust survivors and their families has been carried on by the same team up to the present day. The paper outlines the historical background of persecution, its course and a typical impact it had on health of each of the group of survivors. All individuals suffer from widely understood post-traumatic disorders (F43.1 and F62.0). However, differences in the profile of symptoms can be noted. The manner in which the research was organised and its modifications are also presented. The aim of this paper is to familiarise the Reader with the presented concepts and contextualise them in a political and historical dimensions, and in the continuity of the previous research on KZ-Syndrome and war neuroses.