ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2021
Combat stress in a small-scale society suggests divergent evolutionary roots for posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 16 citations in OpenAlex.
- Evolutionary research on mental health in non-industrialized contexts: An introduction to the special issue.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2026Article
- Little evidence that posttraumatic stress is associated with diurnal hormone dysregulation in Turkana pastoralists.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2025Article
- Prenatal exposure to genocide and subsequent adverse childhood events are associated with DNA methylation of SLC6A4, BDNF, and PRDM8 in early adulthood in Rwanda.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Norm reinforcement, not conformity or environmental factors, is predicted to sustain cultural variation.Evolutionary human sciences · 2024Article
- Conducting epidemiological studies on snakebite in nomadic populations: A methodological paper.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2023Review
- How evolutionary science can help us understand vaccine refusal in the COVID-19 pandemic.BJPsych bulletin · 2023Review
- Early adversity, adult lifestyle, and posttraumatic stress disorder in a military sample.Evolutionary human sciences · 2022Article
- Socioeconomic status effects on health vary between rural and urban Turkana.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Military personnel in industrialized societies often develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) during combat. It is unclear whether combat-related PTSD is a universal evolutionary response to danger or a culture-specific syndrome of industrialized societies. We interviewed 218 Turkana pastoralist warriors in Kenya, who engage in lethal cattle raids, about their combat experiences and PTSD symptoms. Turkana in our sample had a high prevalence of PTSD symptoms, but Turkana with high symptom severity had lower prevalence of depression-like symptoms than American service members with high symptom severity. Symptoms that facilitate responding to danger were better predicted by combat exposure, whereas depressive symptoms were better predicted by exposure to combat-related moral violations. The findings suggest that some PTSD symptoms stem from an evolved response to danger, while depressive PTSD symptoms may be caused by culturally specific moral norm violations.
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