A prisoner of war (POW) refers to an individual, who may be non-combatant or combatant that is a belligerent power holds in customer during or shortly after an armed conflict. Hostile powers may hold a POWs for diverse reasons, including as a means of demonstrating military victory, isolating the prisoners from the enemy combatants that are still in the war, prosecution for war crimes, conspiring or recruiting the prisoners as their combatants, collecting political and military intelligence from the prisoners, punishment of the prisoners, influencing the prisoners towards new religious or political beliefs, and exploitation of the prisoners for their labor among others. POWs are often exposed to unsuitable conditions, including malnutrition, diseases, deprivation, and physical torture. POWs suffer from not only physical health complications but also mental problems, with the commonest psychological health implication among the POWs being post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This paper examines the physiological and psychological stresses that POWs experience under captivity, including the combat-related trauma, and the long-term mental and physical implications that emanate from such confinement.
Commonly held an understanding of Captivity in War
POWs are frequently considered to be at an increased risk of mental illnesses following undesirable conditions that they are exposed to, including torture, malnutrition, and disease. According to Park et al. (2012), POWs find it challenging to cope with the changes that occur during their captivity, a factor that widely influenced the establishment of rehabilitation programs that seek to help POWs to re-adapt to the regular roles. However, POWs still demonstrate great adjustment difficulties in both cognitive and social perspectives. The psychiatric disorders that are often found in POWs are in most cases linked to a mental illness history or a pre-conflict disposition to mental illness. PTSD is one of the most common mental health disorders that is associated with POWs. Park et al. (2012) note that several retrospective studies on POWs have illustrated that captivity contributes to the high levels of PTSD experienced among the POWs.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
According to Ursano and Benedek (2003), being a POW has for many decades been associated with poorer adjustment when they are compared with the service members who do not face captivity. After their return, POWs continue exhibiting higher levels of depression and PTSD for decades. For instance, a sample of Korea and WWII POWs, which was assessed approximately 20 to 30 years after they were held captive demonstrated high percentages of PTSD symptoms, with only 10% of the sample reporting no signs ( Park et al., 2012) . Another similar study carried out in the 1990s including Korea and WWII POWs established that PTSD symptoms among the POWs advance with age. Another study involving WWII POWs conducted 40 years after their captivity indicated that 67% of the prisoners reported suffering from PTSD at some point in their life. 29% of the affected persons had achieved full recovery, 39% demonstrated mild symptoms, 24% showed significant improvement although they showed moderate residual signs, while 8% had deteriorated or had not recovered at all ( Park et al., 2012) .
Common forms of Treatment reported and experienced by POWs
POWs often report experiencing inhumane treatment during the period that they are held captive comprising of little food and water rations, inadequate medical care, forced labor, and physical abuse. POWs report different forms of inhumane treatment including starvation, exposure to disease, lack of rest, insufficient medical care, and physical violence. Tachikawa (2008) postulates that a significant proportion of POWs is either killed before the war ends or dies from disease and starvation. Most POWs report that they are provided with inadequate water and food, a factor that makes them physically weak and suffer from hunger and malnutrition in extreme cases. Moreover, POWs report being tortured through beating among other violent means, especially when the belligerents are seeking to derive crucial information from them.
In other cases, the POWs are beaten to force them to work or walk, particularly when hunger and disease weaken them to the extent that they are unable to walk or perform any significant task. POWs are reported that the extremely weakened prisoners are often stabbed to death or shot by their guards. Further, POWs say exposure to unhygienic conditions that increase their risk of contracting such diseases as malaria and dysentery among others. Despite the high risk of contracting the disease, POWs rarely receive appropriate medical treatment since medicine is in short supply during the war. In addition to physical abuse, POWs reported experiencing psychological mistreatment during captivity. In some cases, the prisoners are blindfolded as they match or during transportation, a factor that causes anxiety and fear among them. The prisoners are also humiliated continuously, which leads to stress and depression.
Conditions in which POWs are held during Captivity
Tachikawa (2008) Notes that the circumstances in which POWs are held vary according to the state or location in which they are attached. During WWII, German POWs were not under the protection of the laws of the war that stated the number of calories that prisoners should receive and prohibited excessive work. Hence, the German POWs were hired to facilitate the reconstruction of the war-destroyed country, with many of them were sent to mining and logging camps. The prisoners maintain that the imprisonment was extensively harsh. One of the young POW stated that the prisoners were subjected to disease, hunger, and brutal assaults, which occurred on a daily basis ( World Peace Foundation, 2015) . The situation only got better in 1948 as the POW indicated ( World Peace Foundation, 2015) . The POWs also suggested that the majority of deaths that occurred during captivity emanated from punitive revenge, overworking, poor health, and such self-destructing behavior as inhaling harmful substances and refusing food among others.
Psychological and Physiological Stresses
POWs experience a wide range of physiological and psychological stresses. Physical injury and trauma often arise during capture, conflict, or during detention. In most cases, prisoners are tortured through physical violence, humiliation, isolation, or political exploitation, which leads to psychological stress or trauma. Physiological stresses, on the other hand, emanate from events that affect the normal body functioning, including nutritional deprivation and lack of medical care. These traumatic life experiences affect both the prisoner’s short-term and long-term mental and physical health, often leading to stress or altered health behaviors. Ursano and Benedek (2003), note that POWs report high frequencies of diminished functional status and persistent pain emanating from the injuries that they suffer from the brutality that they are exposed to during captivity.
Following the physiological and psychological stresses that POWs experience, they demonstrate high levels of mental health and psychiatric effects. POWs who are exposed to severe captivity experiences suffer from such effects as anxiety and irritability, seclusiveness, dependence, and apathy. According to Ursano and Benedek (2003), the stresses associated with physiological and psychological trauma contribute to generalized anxiety, depressive disorders, and PTSD in POWs, as illustrated in studies focusing on the Korean and Pacific WWII POWs. The mental health conditions can persist for years after the captivity, demonstrating severe damage to the physical and psychological functioning of the victims. In addition to the stated psychological health complications, the mental and physiological stresses are associated with increased cases of musculoskeletal disorders, higher risk of somatic complaints, peripheral neuropathies, and gastrointestinal disorders.
Coping Mechanisms in Captivity
The socio-cultural and environmental factors of the captivity setting mostly affect the POWs' experience. POWs in most cases develop coping mechanisms to ensure their survival during detention. POWs often begin developing the coping mechanisms once they get over the initial psychological shock of incarceration ( McMains & Mullins, 2014) . The prisoners start developing routines of coping and adapting to the captivity settings. The coping and adaptation strategies as well as the defense mechanisms that POWs use during captivity mostly comprise of learned behavior. Prisoners of war utilize diverse defense mechanisms to overcome the psychological challenges that emanate from the conditions of confinement. The defense mechanisms may be beneficial or detrimental to the prisoner. The damaging defense mechanisms include counter-phobic reactions, denial reactions, identification, and reaction formation. The user devices include humor, creative elaboration, and intellectualization ( McMains & Mullins, 2014) . Other coping mechanisms include maintaining the military social structure, communication, and personality flexibility. These reactions or coping mechanisms are more adaptive in captivity since they enable the prisoner to deal with the realities of the conditions of confinement.
Conclusion
Prisoners of war are exposed to extreme physical, physiological, and psychological stresses that affect their bodily and mental functioning. In most cases, the prisoners experience malnutrition, disease, and physical violence, which are traumatizing experiences that commonly lead to mental health conditions. Hence, to ensure their survival in captivity, POWs develop different coping mechanisms, which may be either detrimental or beneficial to their wellbeing. However, it is clear that the coping mechanisms are more adaptive in enabling the prisoners to survive the harsh conditions of captivity.
References
McMains, M., & Mullins, W. C. (2014). Crisis Negotiations: Managing critical incidents and hostage situations in law enforcement and corrections . Routledge.
Park, C. L., Pless Kaiser, A., Spiro III, A., King, D. W., & King, L. A. (2012). Does wartime captivity affect late-life mental health? A study of Vietnam-era repatriated prisoners of war. Research in human development , 9 (3), 191-209.
Tachikawa, K. (2008). The treatment of prisoners of war by the Imperial Japanese army and navy focusing on the Pacific War. NIDS Security Reports , (9).
Ursano, R. J., & Benedek, D. M. (2003). Prisoners of war: long-term health outcomes. The Lancet , 362 , s22-s23.
World Peace Foundation. (2015). Soviet Union: German Prisoners of War following World War II [Ebook]. Retrieved from https://sites.tufts.edu/atrocityendings/2015/08/07/german-pows-deaths-under-allied-control/
